Palmyras sands of time stand frozen

The ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Palmyra rise out of the desert sands of eastern Syria. The stone it is made from is rose-gold, and glows as the sun sets. On one side there is the modern village of Palmyra. Here satellite dishes rise from flat rooftops and 4×4s park on the road outside traditional square, three-storey houses. On the other side there is nothing but desert and rock.

One of the first Europeans to visit Palmyra was the intrepid 19th-century traveller, Lady Jane Digby. She led a rather scandalous life, including having the audacity to travel all the way to the deserts of Syria to see the ruins of a rose-coloured city she called Tadmor.

Today, there are few tourists in Palmyra. US President George W Bush included the Middle Eastern country on his “axis of evil” hot list in 2001.

There is one other guest at our family-run hotel. The matriarch of the family - all sons and grandsons - cooks us a dinner of vegetables, rice, flat fresh bread, salad and hummus. We watch the African Cup of Nations game on the TV and discuss soccer, the poor performance of Bafana Bafana, and the 2010 World Cup.

The village of Palmyra is dependent on the secondary income generated from tourism to the ancient city. We are the only customers in the restaurant we have breakfast in the next morning. The streets are empty. Desert sand lies between the knick-knacks of the souvenir stalls.

Palmyra was an Assyrian caravan town for 1 000 years before the Greeks transformed it into a powerful city. It enjoyed 200 years of glory until the Romans annexed it in 217AD. It then became the wealthiest centre in the eastern empire.

The streets are empty
Palmyra’s most famous citizen was Zenobia. Half-Greek, half-Arab, she claimed descent from Cleopatra and became ruler of Palmyra in 267 after the (suspicious) death of her husband, Odenathus. She set her sights on Rome; her army was defeated by the Roman emperor Aurelian in 271AD and he torched the city.

Palmyra was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1089.

Today, the columns of once-massive temples and archways lie across stone-paved streets cracked with age. Desert sand slowly settles on what has been uncovered, building up against the pink walls, wind-worn statues and carved roofs.

From the village, we walk out into the desert to find the Temple of Baal Shamin. The giant pillars of the temple rise into snow-laden clouds. The air is grey. Baal Shamin was the god of storms and fertilising rains. A tree, dead in winter, grows before his shrine at the back of the temple. At the tops of the pillars are carved details of flowers, leaves and rain.

We climb over scattered fallen columns and blocks of masonry. On some blocks lines of writing are carved. The lettering is faint, and often fades into the soft pink of the rock. Others show pictures. We use our imaginations and see shepherds with crooks, trees bearing dates, and stories of ancient gods.

Nearby, along a reconstructed, colonnaded street, is the tetrapylon. It is a massive, square structure that served to mark a junction of thoroughfares. We climb up to the platform to see the four square structures, each comprising four pillars around a statue, that stretch up to the sky. Atop each is a square slab of rock intricately carved at its edges.

Animals into the temple for sacrifice
From here, one road goes out into the desert and the ancient castle of Qala’at ibn Maan, also known as the Arab Castle. Another road goes to the south and the tall, freestanding Towers of Yemliko. The four towers are square at their base and each elongates to a point. They are multi-storey burial chambers. Two thousand years ago, coffins were stacked into niches in the walls. These holes were sealed with stone panels, carved with a portrait of the departed.

Today the niches are empty.

A man claiming to be a Bedouin offers us a ride on his camel. The beast lopes up to me and bends her head down as if looking me in the eye to size me up. She snorts. The man wears grubby headgear and a tunic.

We decline; he insists. We start walking away, he offers us a ride for free. We become suspicious and put some haste into our steps.

We follow the main colonnaded street from the tetrapylon. A Syrian father has brought his five children - all girls under the age of seven - out for the day. The girls munch chocolate bars and stare at us through the columns.

The end of the road is a monumental arch, initially marking the entrance to the city. If you look closely, it is actually two arches, joined like a hinge to pivot the main road through a 30� turn. Look closer and there is a second hinge on the other side. Archaeologists hold this as evidence of the unique, and independent, development of the desert city. The arches show that the street was crooked, that it turned. In Roman design, known for its incredible feats of engineering and road-building, all the streets are straight.

We walk through the desert sand to the Palmyra theatre. It was discovered protruding from the sand in the 1950s, and has since been extensively restored. Sand clogs the gaps between the stone seats.

A lone tourist bus spews out a small group of German tourists. They are immediately accosted by the Bedouin on his camel.

The gatekeeper at the Temple of Bel refuses our (forged-in-Syria) student cards and charges us the full entry fee - 150 Syrian pounds, or about R20.

Bel was the most important of the gods, and his temple is the most complete structure among the ruins of this city. It is also the most impressive. Pillars tower around us forming a courtyard (a walled “temenos”) around the temple itself. The temple stands at the centre of the temenos. Its straight walls, undecorated, rise from the stone of the courtyard. It stands 15m above us. Two thousand years ago, when the temple had a stone roof, this would have been much higher.

Inside, the colours of the stones alternate between pink, brown, yellow and burnt black, and create waves of colour from the altar to the ceiling. Rows of decoration line the sunken passage that leads through the courtyard to the outside wall. Archaeologists theorise that the passage was used to bring animals into the temple for sacrifice.

The temple was built in 32AD.

It is bitterly cold. Thick black clouds threaten snow. We sit on fallen pillars outside the temple and watch the modern village of Palmyra through the grey mist.

We walk along the cracked ancient road back to the village. We sip coffee in an empty restaurant, holding the mugs against our hands to keep warm. The sun sinks over the ruins in a glow of pink, reflecting off the ancient city as gold.

For tours to Syria, call ITT International Travel and Tours on 031 303 7810, email info@itt.co.za, or see www.itt.co.za

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