Sanctuary of Baalshamin

File / Documentation

Name

148274_sv.jpg

Size

2.14 MB

Format

JPEG

Checksum (MD5)

ec20111c07b223dc52ca8e0a5b62ed0f

Creator(s)

Roman, Syrian

Time period

creation date: 14-273

Location

Site: Palmyra (Hims (governorate), Syria)

Cultural context

Roman

Syrian

Description

The cosmic god Baalshamin (equated, like Bel, with Greek Zeus) had a new, walled three-court sanctuary (see fig. 2), recalling that at Seeia in southern Syria, laid out with a northern shrine (c. ad 11–c. 23), a portico (ad 67) and a ritual banquet room.

Tadmor’s earliest surviving structure, a Mesopotamian-style hypogeum ‘underground tomb’ with arched stone doorway and brick-vaulted corridor containing nine loculi (burial compartments) and graves, used c. 150 bc–ad 11, was probably away from housing, but later, as dwellings advanced, it was preserved within the Sanctuary of Baalshamin (1d). The real spur to development seems to have come with semi-independence (c. 64 bc–c. ad 14), when stone began to supplement and supplant mud-brick.exterior is classical in appearance, while the design of the interior is more in keeping with a Semitic cult, and includes an adyton [adyta = small inner rooms adjacent to or within the naos, found in some ancient temples]

exterior, 1992

Work type

Temple

Sanctuary (religious building space)

Medium

stone

Keywords