Analysis of Some Aspects of Ancient Palmyra Society through Funerary Art in the Roman Period

Abstract

The research sheds light on the importance of funerary art in identifying some details of Palmyra society in the Roman period, due to the important transformations that this period witnessed. It also identifys the intermixture between the local style of funerary art and Roman art that influenced Palmyra’s art at the time. This is achieved by analyzing funerary stelae scenes that have been preserved in  local and international museums, and comparing them with their Roman counterparts. One notable result highlights the importance of women in society and the different roles they played, whether housewives or women of society. Palmyra’s artists were eager to depict the deceased’s work by carving some tools indicative of it. Another result elicitates the economic transformations that Palmyra society witnessed beginning in the second century AD, by depicting the Palmyra women and men in full elegance, perhaps to emphasize the prosperity that the Palmyra’s citizens had, due to the city’s increased commercial activity and robust economy. Besides local identitiy, Roman influence appeared in clothes, hairstyles of women and men, along with the use of narrative style to portray the deceased with family members in different dimensions, levels, or alone using the idea of Imagines Clipeatae