Built for Eternity

Abstract Extending around the ancient oasis city, the necropoleis of Palmyra feature over four hundred built funerary monuments that were used as family tombs. Three basic tomb types have been identified: tower tombs, hypogea, and temple tombs. On the basis of surviving foundation texts in reference to a foundation date, it may be observed that the tower tombs represent the oldest monument group, dating to the end of the first century bc. In the course of the first century ad, tower tombs and hypogea were built simultaneously. Whereas the underground burial monuments continued into the second and third centuries ad, the temple tombs replaced the towers around the mid-second century ad. Generally, the funerary monuments of Palmyra show that, over the course of their three-hundred-year history, the families’ desire to represent themselves increased steadily, which also caused increasingly elaborate furnishing of the tombs. The mode of representation was similar in all tomb types.