Tower of Iamblichus
About
A dedicatory inscription fixed this tower's completion at 83 CE, one of several securely dated giants that once studded the valley west of Palmyra's colonnade. It rose in tiers of loculi that held hundreds of the dead behind sealed relief portraits. Its stone core, nearly four stories tall, survived close to two thousand years of desert wind before militants dynamited it in 2015.
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, Dedicatory inscription, Tower of Iamblichus 83 CE
The tower's own foundation inscription fixes its completion date.
Sources
Nearby
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