The magnificent ruins of the ancient site of Palmyra near the modern town of Tadmor in central Syria, many of them dating back to the early centuries CE, were the target of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group this year. A video from the group released in August showed the destruction of the Temple of Bel, one of the best-preserved and most impressive buildings at the site. A second video showed the destruction of the Temple of Baalshamin, equally impressive and like the Temple of Bel dating back to the 1st century CE. News emerged in September that the group had also blown up several of the ancient tower tombs at Palmyra dating from 44 to 103 CE. In October it destroyed the Roman triumphal arch built to celebrate a victory over the Persians that stood at the entrance to the remains of a grand colonnade of ancient pillars. It was reported in August that the group had savagely killed the site's former head of antiquities, Khaled Al-Asaad, after he had refused to reveal the location of some of Palmyra's ancient treasures. The explanation the group has given for the destruction of the ruins at Palmyra is that they are “idolatrous”. However, since it took over much of northern Iraq and then eastern Syria in late 2014 and early 2015 it has reportedly shown as much interest in looting the region's archaeological sites as in destroying them, selling on any portable objects it finds on the international antiquities market. When news broke that the group had occupied the site of Palmyra and neighbouring town of Tadmor in May, there were immediate concerns that it would loot and destroy the site, one of the most important, and perhaps the most beautiful, of all the classical sites in the country. In February this year, the group released a video showing activists destroying objects in the Mosul Museum in neighbouring Iraq, taken over late last year, including irreplaceable ancient Assyrian works. In April, a further video was released showing the destruction of the northwest palace of ancient Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, also in Iraq. The voiceover on the videos said the ancient remains were being destroyed in order to combat what it said was “idolatry”. The group has also been destroying the Islamic, Christian and other heritage of northern Iraq and eastern Syria, with reports emerging earlier this year that it had destroyed mosques, mausoleums and Sufi shrines across the region, along with the shrines of the prophets Seth, Jonah and Daniel in Mosul. Christian churches have been demolished and mediaeval and later heritage sites partially or completely destroyed. The IS group's campaign to destroy the ancient, Christian, Islamic and other heritage of the region it controls has been interpreted as part of its campaign of ethnic and religious cleansing, which has seen it enslave or force into exile groups or communities not following its fundamentalist version of Islam. Its persecution of the Yazidi people of northern Iraq, starting in 2014, has led to the massacre of Yazidi civilians, the abduction or slavery of Yazidi women, and the flight of tens of thousands of refugees. In August, the United States, acting with an international coalition put together to combat the group, began airstrikes against IS to prevent the massacre of Yazidis in the Sinjar Mountains in northern Iraq. The international community has reacted with consternation – but apparent impotence – to the destruction of the classical, Christian, Islamic and other heritage of Iraq and Syria by the IS group. Voices have been raised at UNESCO, the UN's cultural arm, against the destruction, with Irina Bokova, the organisation's director-general, describing particularly the destruction of the ruins at Palmyra as “an intolerable crime against civilisation” in August. UN Security Council Resolution 2249, unanimously adopted on 20 November, condemned “the continued gross, systematic and widespread abuses of human rights and violations of humanitarian law, as well as the barbaric acts of destruction of looting and cultural heritage” carried out by IS. UN Security Council Resolution 2199, adopted in February, had earlier condemned the destruction of the cultural heritage in Iraq and Syria carried out by IS and had noted that IS and other groups were “generating income from engaging directly or indirectly in the looting and smuggling of cultural heritage items from archaeological sites, museums, libraries, archives and other sites in Iraq and Syria.” It called on all UN member states to “take appropriate steps to prevent the trade in Iraqi and Syrian cultural property and other items of archaeological, historical, cultural, rare scientific and religious importance illegally removed from Iraq since 6 August 1990 and from Syria since 15 March 2011.” However, such international condemnations were not enough to save Palmyra from destruction, and future generations will now no longer be able to learn from and enjoy many of the magnificent classical remains that formerly graced the site. Palmyra has been registered as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 1980, and it is one of six such sites in Syria. According to UNESCO, the ruins of Palmyra, “rising out of the Syrian desert in an oasis northeast of Damascus, are testament to the unique aesthetic achievement of a wealthy caravan oasis under the rule of Rome from the 1st to the 3rd century CE.” The city flourished during the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, when it was part of an important trade route connecting the Roman and Mediterranean world to Asia. It was at this time that many of the city's outstanding monuments, including the theatre, colonnade and monumental arches, were built. Owing to its position as a frontier city on the borders between the Roman and Persian Empires, Palmyra's population was mixed and came from various religious and ethnic backgrounds. While Greek and Latin were the official languages, Aramaic was more widely spoken, and the city's inhabitants followed a variety of different religions. “Like most cities in the Roman Empire, there was a local pantheon of gods, in Palmyra's case dominated by the god Bel and his acolytes,” wrote French historian Maurice Sartre, an authority on the ancient Near East, in the French newspaper Le Monde after news of the IS occupation of Palmyra broke in May. “But gods from Mesopotamia can also be found at Palmyra (Nabu), as well as from sedentary Syria (Baalshamin and Atargatis), Phoenicia (Astarte and Shadrapha) and the desert Arab tribes (the female warrior god Allat). Greece and Rome are not absent either, seen in reliefs of Hercules found at the site and of the goddess Athena identified with Allat,” he added. Palmyra achieved a wider fame in the late 3rd century CE, when Zenobia, the city's queen under Roman suzerainty, rebelled against Roman rule and temporarily conquered the Roman province of Egypt, killing the Roman prefect. She ruled Egypt and much of the Near East until 271 CE, when she was defeated by the Roman emperor Aurelian and taken to Rome in triumph. Palmyra had fallen into decay by the time it was taken by the Arabs in 634 CE, and it was renamed Tadmor in Arabic. A fortress was built at the site in 1230, and this was extended and restored in 1630 by the local Ottoman-era ruler Fakhruddin. Its remains can be seen above the classical site today. After the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011, Palmyra was spared much of the destruction seen in other parts of the country, possibly because of its remote location. It was reported in January 2015 that minor damage had taken place at the site as a result of armed clashes and that funerary busts and sculptures had been looted from surrounding tombs. However, with the capture of the site by IS in May, Palmyra also began to feel the effects of the conflict in the country, culminating in the destruction of the ancient temples in August, the tombs in September and the triumphal arch in October. In his comments on the IS occupation of Palmyra, Sartre said that “Islamic State in Palmyra is like Islamic State in the Louvre. To destroy Palmyra would be like destroying the Mont St Michel [in France] or the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.”
