Tower of Kitot
About
Founded in 40 CE, this tower held one of the oldest known examples of the Palmyrene funerary banquet relief, a scene of the dead reclining at an eternal feast that became the city's signature image. Multiple stories of burial niches climbed above a ground floor lined with sculpted family portraits, until ISIL destroyed 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, Foundation inscription, Tower of Kitot 40 CE
Names the tower's founding date, from which it takes its modern designation.
Sources
Nearby
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