PALMYRA, the Greek and Latin name of a famous city of the East, now a mere collection of Arab hovels, but still an object of interest on account of its wonderful ruins. In II. Chron. viii. 4, and in the native inscriptions, it is called Tadmor, and this is the name by which it is known among the Arabs at the present day and, it would seem, as far back as the 12th century B.C., for "Tadmar which is in the land of the Amurru" occurs in an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I. c. 1115-1100 B.C. (Dhorme in Rev. Bibl. 1924, pp. 106 ff.). The site lies 15om. N.E. of Damascus and five days' camel journey from the Euphrates, in an oasis of the Syrian desert, 1,30oft. above sea-level. At this point the great trade routes met in ancient times, the one cross ing from the Phoenician ports to the Persian gulf, the other coming up from Petra and south Arabia.
In II. Chron. viii. 4, Solomon is said to have built "Tadmor in the wilderness"; I. Kings ix. 18, however, from which the Chronicler derived his statement, reads "Tamar" in the Hebrew text, with "Tadmor" in the Hebrew margin; there can be no doubt that the text is right and refers to Tamar in the land of Judah (Ezek. xlvii. 19; xlviii. 28). The Chronicler, we must sup pose, altered the name because Tadmor was a city more renowned in his day, or possibly because he wished to increase the extent of Solomon's kingdom. The date of the Chronicler may be placed about 30o B.c., so Palmyra must have been in existence centuries before then. Of its remoter history, except for the allusion in Tiglath-Pileser's inscription, nothing is known. We may suppose that after the fall of the Babylonian Empire (6th century B.c.), Arabian tribes began to take possession of the partly cultivated lands east of Canaan, and learned to speak and write in Aramaic, the language which was most widely current throughout the region west of the Euphrates in the time of the Persian Empire (6th-4th century B.c.). It is not till much later that Palmyra first appears in Western literature. We learn from Appian (Bell. civ. v. 9) that in 42-41 B.C. the city was rich enough to excite the cupidity of Mark Antony. The series of native inscriptions, written in Aramaic, begins a few years after; the earliest bears the date 304 of the Seleucid era, i.e., 9 B.C. (Cooke, North Semitic Inscriptions No. 141 =Vogue, Syrie Centrale No. 3oa) ;
by this time Palmyra had become an important trade-post between the Roman and the Parthian states. Its characteristic civilization grew out of a mixture of various elements, Arabic, Aramaic, Greek and Roman. The bulk of the population was of Arab race, and though Aramaic was used as the written language, in common intercourse Arabic had by no means disappeared. The proper names and the names of deities, while partly Aramaic, are also in part unmistakably Arabic : it is suggestive that a purely Arabic term (falid, NSI. No. 136) was used for the septs into which the citizens were divided.
Originally an Arab settlement, the oasis was transformed in the course of time from a mere halting-place for caravans to a city of the first rank, and a religious centre, with the worship of the Sun-god dominating that of inferior deities.
The chief luxuries of the ancient world, silks, jewels, pearls, perfumes, incense and the like, were drawn from India, China and southern Arabia. The trade followed two routes; one by the Red sea, Egypt and Alexandria, the other from the Persian gulf through the Syro-Arabian desert. The latter, when the Nabataean kingdom of Petra (q.v.) came to an end (A.D. o5), passed into the hands of the Palmyrene merchants. Their caravans (avvootat) travelled right across the desert to the great entrepots on the Euphrates, (NSI. Nos. 113-115). The trade was enormously profitable, not only to the merchants but to the town, which levied a duty on all exports and imports ; at the same time f or midable risks had to be faced both from the desert-tribes and from the Parthians, and successfully to plan or convoy a great caravan came to be looked upon as a service to the state, often recognized by public monuments erected by "council and people" or by the merchants interested in the venture. These monuments, a conspicuous feature of Palmyrene architecture, took the form of statues placed on brackets projecting from the upper part of the pillars which lined the principal thoroughfares. Thus arose, beside minor streets, the imposing central avenue which, starting from a triumphal arch near the great temple of the Sun, formed the main axis of the city from south-east to north-west for a length of 1,24o yards, and at one time consisted of not less than 75o columns of rosy-white limestone, each 55ft. high.