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Palmyra as a trading centre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

M. Gawlikowski
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Extract

Ever since the Rostovtzeff's famous book Palmyra is commonly called a “caravan city”. As a matter of fact, it is the only real caravan city among those considered as such by the great scholar. Both Gerasa and Dura-Europos were calm, provincial towns living off the countryside, and no signs of a commercial vocation are on record in either. Petra was above all a royal capital, and the importance of its trade, though likely there, remains entirely to be demonstrated. We might now add that Hatra, also a royal city and a major religious centre, owed its prosperity more to these characteristics than to far-flung commerce.

I shall leave aside the Jordanian cities, Petra and Gerasa, very different from each other and from the other three, including Palmyra, which have participated in a particular brand of civilisation, often and rather mistakingly called Parthian.

These urban societies shared a common language, Aramaean, and a body of customs—religious and social—resulting from a mixed heritage in which a substantial nomad Arab contribution predominated over more ancient traditions of Syria and Mesopotamia. While practically no trace of Iranian influence can be detected, there was certainly a more or less thin veneer of Hellenism, generally supposed to have spread within the limits of the Parthian empire. Actually, there is not much to show in this respect for the Iranian part of the realm, or for the capital Ctesiphon. What is known concerns mostly the Greek cities of Susa and Seleucia, and does not manifest any close relation to the conditions of the Aramaic speaking cities we know further west. Whether Palmyra was a “spiritual daughter” of Seleucia, to quote an influencial and imaginative formula of Henri Seyrig's, is a question still waiting, after sixty years, for a documented answer.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 56 , 1994 , pp. 27 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1994 

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Footnotes

*

Paper read at the BANEA Conference in Liverpool, December 1992.

References

1 Rostovtzeff, M., Caravan Cities, Oxford 1932 Google Scholar.

2 Colledge, M. A. R., Parthian Art, London 1977 Google Scholar. For Palmyra in particular, see Colledge, , The Art of Palmyra, London 1976 Google Scholar; Starcky, J. and Gawlikowski, M., Palmyre, Paris 1985 Google Scholar; Will, E., Les Palmyréniens. La Venise des sables, Paris 1992 Google Scholar.

3 Seyrig, H., “Palmyra and the East”, JRS 40 (1950), 1–7 Google Scholar.

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6 See Will, E., “Pline l'Ancien et Palmyre: un problème d'histoire ou d'histoire littéraire?”, Syria 62 (1985), 263–269 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See the list of inscriptions below (hereafter inscriptions; to be also published in the papers of the International Collo-quium on Palmyra and the Silk Road (Palmyra, 04 1992)Google Scholar.

8 Shifman, I., Palmirskij Poshlinnyj Tarif, Moscow 1980 Google Scholar; Teixidor, J., Un port romain du désert. Palmyre, (Semitica 34, 1984)Google Scholar; Matthews, J. F., “The Tax Law of Palmyra”, JRS 74 (1984), 157–180 Google Scholar.

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11 CIS II, 3913, II, 61–62, III, 45–46Google Scholar.

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14 Inv. IX, 11 (= CIS II, 3915, incomplete).

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16 Inv. IX, 15 (= CIS II, 3917).

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25 Gawlikowski, M., “Le commerce de Palmyre sur terre et sur eau”, L'Arabie et ses mers bordières I. Itinéraires et voisinages, Travaux de la Maison de l'Orient, Lyon 1988, 165–172 Google Scholar.

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27 Seyrig, H., AAAS 13 (1963), 159–166 Google Scholar.

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29 The strategos of 'Ana is directly confirmed in A D. 225: Cantineau, J., Syria 14 (1933), 178–180 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the Nabataean mercenary: CIS II, 3973 Google Scholar, see Lipiński, E., Orientalia 45 (1976), 73, n. 164Google Scholar, and Teixidor, J., Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society Columbia University 5 (1973), 405–409 Google Scholar.

30 Mouterde, R. and Poidebard, A., “La route ancienne des caravanes entre Palmyre et Hit”, Syria 12 (1931), 105–115 Google Scholar; Gregory, Sh. and Kennedy, D., Sir Aurel Stein's Limes Report, BAR S.272, Oxford, 1985, 183–237 Google Scholar.

31 Will, E., “Marchands et chefs de caravanes à Palmyre”, Syria 34 (1957), 262–277 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see recently Bowersock, G., “Social and Economic History of Syria under the Roman Empire”, Archéologie et Histoire de la Syrie II, Dentzer, J.-M. and Orthmann, W. (eds), Saarbrücken 1989, 63–80 Google Scholar.

32 Ingholt, H., “Deux inscriptions bilingues de Palmyre”, Syria 13 (1932), 278–292 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.