George Albert Cooke

“ During the crisis Odenathus remained loyal to Gallienus, and was rewarded for his fidelity by the grant of a position without parallel under ordinary circumstances; as hereditary prince of Palmyra he was appointed dux Orientis, a sort of vice-emperor for the East (A.D. 262) . He started promptly upon the work of recovery. With his Palmyrene troops, [7] strengthened by what was left of the Roman army corps, he took the offensive against Shapur, defeated him at Ctesiphon, and in a series of brilliant engagements won back the East for Rome. ”

“ The Arabian tribes began to take possession of the partly cultivated lands east of Canaan, became masters of the Eastern trade, gradually acquired settled habits, and learned to speak and write in Aramaic, the language which was most widely current throughout the region west of the Euphrates in the time of the Persian Empire (6th–4th century B.C.) . It is not till much later that Palmyra first appears in Western literature. ”

“ The series of native inscriptions, written in Aramaic, begins a few years after; the earliest bears the date 304 of the Seleucid era, i.e. 9 B.C. (Cooke, North-Semitic Inscriptions No. 141=Vogüé, Syrie Centrale No. 30a) ; by this time Palmyra had become an important trade-post between the Roman and the Parthian states. Its characteristic civilization grew out of a mixture of various elements, Arabic, Aramaic, Greek and Roman. The bulk of the population was of Arab race, and though Aramaic was used as the written language, in common intercourse Arabic had by no means disappeared. ”

“ Palmyra also possessed the character of a religious centre, with the worship of the Sungod dominating that of inferior deities.
The chief luxuries of the ancient world, silks, jewels, pearls, perfumes, incense and the like, were drawn from India, China and southern Arabia. Pliny (N. H. xii. 41) reckons the yearly import of these wares into Rome at not less than three-quarters of a million of English money. The trade followed two routes: one by the Red Sea, Egypt and Alexandria, the other from the Persian Gulf through the Syro-Arabian desert. ”

“ Zenobia seems to have ruled on behalf of her young son Wahab-allath or Athenodorus as the name is Graecized, who counts the years of his reign from the date of his father’s death. Under Odenathus Palmyra had extended her sway over Syria and Arabia, perhaps also over Armenia, Cilicia and Cappadocia; but now the troops of Zenobia, numbering it is said 70,000, proceeded to occupy Egypt; the Romans under Probus resisted vigorously but without avail, and by the beginning of A.D. 270, when Aurelian succeeded Claudius as emperor, Wahab-allath was governing Egypt with the title of “king.” ”

“ Local industries do not seem to have been important. One of the chief of them was the production of salt from the deposits of the desert; [2] another was no doubt the manufacture of leather; the inscriptions mention also a powerful gild of workers in gold and silver (NSI. No. 126) ; but Palmyra was not an industrial town, and the exacting fiscal system which drew profit even out of the bare necessaries of life—such as water, oil, wheat, salt, wine, straw, wool, skins (see Tariff ii. b, NSI. pp. 315 sqq.) —must have weighed heavily upon the artisan class. ”

“ The proper names and the names of deities, while partly Aramaic, are also in part unmistakably Arabic: it is suggestive that a purely Arabic term (faḥd, NSI. No. 136) was used for the septs into which the citizens were divided.
Originally an Arab settlement, the oasis was transformed in the course of time from a mere halting-place for caravans to a city of the first rank. The true Arab despises agriculture ”

“ Some are lofty towers containing sepulchral chambers in stories; [3] others are house-like buildings with a single chamber and a richly ornamented portico; the sides of these chambers within are adorned with the names and sculptured portraits of the dead. ”