Temple of Bel, Palmyra
About
Palmyra's greatest sanctuary was dedicated on 6 April 32 CE and fills a walled precinct two hundred metres across, big enough to hold the whole civic body at festival. The temple inside quietly breaks the classical rules it borrows: the door is on the long side, and there are two shrines rather than one, at either end, the northern reached by a stair for carrying the god out in procession. Bel is worshipped here with the sun god Yarhibol and the moon god Aglibol. Ceiling beams show veiled Palmyrene women and a camel bearing a shrouded litter. In 117 CE the cult is at its height.
What happened here
The building itself is a house for the god, and most people never go inside. Everything public happens on the steps and at the altar in front: an animal led up, examined, killed cleanly, its organs read, the meat divided and eaten. The priest covers his head and a flute player keeps up a noise so no ill-omened word is heard. Worshippers leave what they can afford — a terracotta figure, a coin, a model of the body part they want healed — and the accumulated clutter is periodically cleared and buried on site. On festival days the doors are opened and the cult statue is dressed, garlanded, and sometimes carried out through the streets. The temple also holds money, which is why towns keep their treasury in one.
In ancient writing
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 5.88
Palmyra set apart by its soil and its water in a great circuit of sand, and by a position that leaves it courted by Rome and Parthia both.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →