Tower of Atenatan
About
A bilingual Greek and Palmyrene inscription over its stone door dates this squat, tapering tower to 9 BCE, the earliest securely dated tomb in the Palmyrene necropolis, naming Attenan's sons Kohlu and Hiran as the family it was built for. Rising some 12 meters, its four or five floors of burial niches were reached through a panelled door that still turned on stone pivots that had swung for generations of the same family, more than a century before this map's 117 CE snapshot.
What happened here
The tomb is built where the traffic is: on the road out of town, facing the carriageway, close enough to read at walking pace. That is the design brief. Inside there may be a single chamber for one family or niches for dozens, with cremation urns or, increasingly, bodies laid out. Outside there is a portrait, an inscription giving the dead their offices and their years, and often a bench, because visitors come back. The family returns on the anniversary and at the February festival of the dead, brings wine and food, and eats a meal at the graveside. Endowments are left to keep it up and lawsuits follow when they are not honoured. A grand tomb is the last public building a family gets to commission.
In ancient writing
- Inscription, Bilingual Greek/Palmyrene foundation inscription 9 BCE
The earliest dated funerary inscription known from Palmyra, carved above the tomb's stone door.
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 →