Palmyra

Friday, May 18, 2007
Today we drove out of Damascus, through the desert to the oasis at Palmyra. This was a trade stop along the “Silk Road,” a caravan path connecting the east to the west and was an eastern most outpost of the Roman Empire. A famous queen named Zenobia ruled here. The ruins are spectacular. You can walk through the whole town: market place, temple, main street, theater…One can see the huge temple complex which gives me some idea what the temple in Jerusalem must have looked like. There is stone here imported all the way from Egypt. It is hard to imagine how they erected these buildings. One can also visit underground and tower tombs which held 300 members of a family, each embalmed and with a beautiful sculpted portrait for a tomb stone. I saw my first camels today also!