Cynthia Finlayson, one of the last Western archaeologists to leave Syria as the political situation in the country deteriorated, has spoken to The Art Newspaper about the ongoing damage at the ancient site of Palmyra.
Following the news of the destruction of the 2,000-year-old temples of Baalshamin on 24 August and Bel on 1 September, Finlayson told us: “We cannot even begin to calculate what the loss of these temples means.
“There are very few late Hellenistic/
early Roman-era buildings built by indigenous cultures left in the Middle East, as most were overbuilt during the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods. They were built by Arab-Aramean civilisations and are therefore part of Arab cultural history. They represent the height of their adoption and adaption of Classical [influences] to create their own style and civilisation.”
The destruction of the temples, as well as the murder of Khaled al-
Asaad—the site’s 82-year-old custodian—and the demolition on 4 September of seven significant tower tombs dating to the first and second century AD, is the work of Isil. But Finlayson stresses that the war is more complicated than “bad guys versus good guys”, as it is often portrayed in the media. “There is the good, the bad and the ugly on all sides,” she says.
Looting had begun before Isil seized control, she says; soldiers and locals were selling artefacts to feed themselves. “Isil is just more systematic. You could probably tell where they are by looking at the characteristics of what is being done at the archaeological sites.”
Finlayson is the acting director of the Syro-American expeditions to Palmyra and Apamea, and an associate professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University in Utah. She has excavated in the region for nearly 20 years. Her team is thought to have been the last international group to leave Syria, in June 2011, but she has stayed in close contact with Syrian colleagues who remain in the war zone.
The destruction of ancient sites during Syria’s four-and-a-half-year civil war, in which an estimated 200,000 people have so far died, is unprecedented, Finlayson says. “It’s worse because the road systems allow destructive forces to reach areas that the Mongols couldn’t. [The rebuilding] is going to take hundreds of years.”
She says that the 2,000-year-old pagan temples of Bel and Baalshamin were later converted into Christian churches—two possible reasons why they were targeted. The Bel temple, which was built in AD32 and had pagan deities and zodiac symbols decorating its ceiling, “featured some of the only depictions of women participating in processions associated with pagan festivals at Palmyra”, Finlayson says. It also had faint shadows of Byzantine-era Christian paintings “that scholars were just beginning to understand before the civil war”.
She says the Bel temple might also have been razed by Isil for its more modern associations, however: it hosted evening music concerts during the city’s annual horse-racing festival, which drew equestrian enthusiasts from across the Gulf. “The band played to a packed crowd on the front steps of the temple,” she says. “Isil is very much against music and it was a focal point of a modern celebration of Arabic music and culture.”