Destruction of Palmyra Continues

[guy]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11819760/Islamic-State-destroy-ancient-temple-at-Palmyra.html


An Isil flag fluttering atop the circular wall bounding the orchestra at the Roman theatre of the ancient city of Palmyra
 

 Historians said the site's significance has increased as the country around it shatters.

“When, in due course, the killing stops, the blood dries, and the Syrian people attempt to refashion something out of the rubble to which their land has been reduced, they will need symbols,” wrote historian Tom Holland in a recent article.

“To mutilate a country’s past is to cripple its future.”

 

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited August 27, 2015 by guy

[Viggen]

...interesting article...

 

The West rightly condemns Isis' vandalism of ancient sites – but not Saudi Arabia's

Saudi Arabia's grotesque destruction of Muslim history is directly linked to Isis’s own purgation of the past

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-west-rightly-condemns-isis-vandalism-of-ancient-sites-but-not-when-the-saudis-do-it-a6689931.html

[caldrail]

Vandalism of cultural heritage is nothing new. The library of Alexandria for instance, and I understand another important library got burned at one point. Or the looters at large in the world today. On one recent television documentary, researchers followed satellite data to an almost unknown border fortification/wall in North Africa. The whole site was pockmarked by speculative digs, including some by JCB machinery.

[Viggen]

....looks like Syrian Forces are busy retaking Palmyra, hopefully archaeologists can get there soon to assess and maybe safe whats left to safe...

[caesar novus]

I ran across some interesting tidbits about Palmyra... not sure if absolutely true. First, the liberation of Palmyra was assisted by a "Russian Rambo" who upon being engulfed by the enemy, called a fatal airstrike on his own position. http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/30/europe/body-of-russian-rambo-flown-home/index.html

 

Also in November 2015 Minerva, it  says the eagle on US dollar bill started out from a Roman eagle sketched in Palmyra. Such sketchings were made in mid 1700's and were widely published as an architecture source book. In Wiki under "great seal" you can see the scraggly Roman type eagle before it was converted into the present bald headed eagle. I wonder what those founders from the enlightenment age would say about current plans to change U.S. currency depictions from aspirational ideals to pity whoring.... portraits of blind albino eskimos in wheelchairs or something of the sort.

 

Also they show various photos of Palmyra taken in mid 1800s. They infer Palmyra was ruined by Aurelian as much as by time. Around 270 he put down a rebellion by Queen Zenobia with wholesale massacres and destruction.

Edited April 30, 2016 by caesar novus

[caldrail]

That bit about a Roman eagle? That might be true of Napoleon and his vision of a French Empire, but remains an assumption that is unsupported by textual source in America, and also ignores the significance of both the geographic separation of the country and the significance of native birds, the American Bald Eagle among them. Whilst I agree that many classical ideas were reworked by the Americans politically, the cultural importance of the eagle symbol probably has an origin closer to home, since America was born from a desire to create a country free of European servitude rather than a European Empire that inherited Roman military glory.