volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Oasis of Tudmur (Palmyra). 187
and visited several of tlie remarkable tomb-towers which
are dotted freely over the sides of the hills near the town,
and saw many inscriptions and busts of deceased
Pahnyrenes, several being both named and dated.
The colimins and temples and the towers of the tombs
assumed a yellowish-pink colour in the light of the
setting sun, and looked remarkably picturesque.
Tudmur, like Karyaten, is an oasis, and it is to this
fact that it owed its importance and wealth in times of
old. It was the terminus for caravans going to and
coming from the Persian Gulf and Babylon, and the
great centre from which the products of India and
Persia were distributed to the north and west. There
must have been a town in the Oasis of Tudmur from
time immemorial, and systematic excavations would
probably bring remains of it to light. Though the
town that stood there in the time of the Romans was
called by them "Palmira"^ and " Hadrianopolis," the
natives always called it " Tadmor," or " Tudmur,""
and they do so to this day. The meaning of the name
is unknown. In 2 Chronicles viii, 4, the town is said
to have been built by Solomon, but the writer con-
founded " Tadmor " with Tamar, a town in Judea
mentioned in Ezekiel xlvii, 19 ; xlviii, 28.^ His mistake
is important for it shows that Tudmur was an old
and thriving town when he wrote. All the remains
of temples, tombs, etc., which I saw at Tudmur belonged
practically to the first three centmries of the
Christian Era, and all were built under Greek or Roman
influence. Though the people of Tudmur were Arabs
and adopted the Aramean dialect and script* of Western
1 So spelled in Pliny v, 21 (25), 88.
2 The form given in the Palmyrene inscriptions is Tadmur, nionn.
^ When the Greeks called Tudmur HaXjuvpa, or TlaKfjiipa, or the
"place of palms," they seem to have confounded Tudmur with
" tamar," "lOfi, a pahn tree.
* The oldest Semitic inscription at Palmyra is dated 304 of the
Era of the Seleucidse, i.e., B.C. 9 ;
see de Yogai, Inscriptions Semitiques,
No. 30. This was pointed out by Dr. Halifax in his narrative printed
in 1695. The oldest Greek inscription is one year older.