The Lure of the Desert: Re-assessing Palmyra
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21 Oct
23 Oct
2026
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Aesthetics, Criticism and Theory (ACT)
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Alessandra Ricci
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Image: Funerary bust: the so-called “Beauty of Palmyra,” 190–210 CE, Palmyrene
“Palmyra in the desert is a magnificent ruin, a dead city, only known to our Museum through some funerary monuments; a small but representative collection of fifteen busts and reliefs brought back by Dr. John P. Peters in 1890.” With these words Paul Legrain, a Catholic priest and curator of the Babylonian Section in the Penn Museum (Philadelphia) introduced his study of “rich merchants and notable ladies” living in Palmyra (Syria) in the second and third centuries CE.
Since the seventeenth century discovery in the heart of the Syrian desert of Palmyra (Tadmor is its Semitic name), the city appeared to occupy a remarkable position in the geo-cultural crossroads of civilizations where Hellenistic and Roman aesthetic traditions met, transformed, and were transformed by the cultures of the ancient Near East.
However, scholarly narratives on Palmyra have recurrently been influenced by orientalizing, classicizing, colonial and postcolonial trends. Palmyra has and continues to be cast also as intrinsically connected with Western traditions or alternatively as a child of the Orient. Its famous third century queen Zenobia is popularized as a rebellious warrior queen against Rome acting with the complicity of the philosopher Cassius Longinos. These narratives find ample support in selective iconographic and documentary materials from Palmyra, something the city abounds with.
This course centers on the art and architecture of Palmyra in its own time, within the context of the culture and politics of its time and with emphasis on the Roman periods. The course looks at the cultural expressions of Palmyra as active voices of their times and places value on the meanings of self-representations as narratives produced by the Palmyrene themselves.
Online Public Seminar Series on ZOOM
Lectures in this series will be recorded and made available for 24 hours via a secure Zoom link on a scheduled date, subject to scholar consent due to the nature of ongoing research.
P.S: The Zoom link to join the lecture will be shared 24 hours prior to the talk.
Duration -
October 21, 22, 23, 2026
Timing: 6:30 - 8:30 PM IST
Fees
Rs. 3,000 (For student discounts registrations kindly email info@jp-india.org)
Register
Alessandra Ricci
Alessandra Ricci is an Associate Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Archaeology and cultural heritage at Koç University in Istanbul. An academic migrant from Rome to Istanbul via the United States, her research interests center on the city of Constantinople, its Asiatic and European hinterlands in the Late Antique and Byzantine periods. As a field archaeologist, she has excavated the monastery of Satyros/Anatellon built by patriarch Ignatios (867-877) in Istanbul where has coordinated public archaeology activities together with a site management plan and a conservation program. She works and publishes on the diachronicity of buildings and their relationship with urban and landscape contexts, on material culture associated with archaeological areas and architecture and on the contemporary reception of Byzantine studies.