volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

IQO Palmyrene Busts.
hoofs. Then he dug into a large hollow place and removed
a slab of stone, and discovered a plastered chamber
containing a bier, on which was stretched out a woman
lying on her back. There were seventy ornaments on
her body, and in her hair was a tablet of gold on
which was inscribed, " O my God, I, Tadmur, the
" daughter of Hassan [invoke] Thy Nanie. May God
" make the wasting disease enter into the men who
" shall enter this my house." Then Marwan ordered
his diggers to replace the stones and shovel away the
debris, and to restore the place to its former condition,
and he did not carry away a single ornament belonging
to the Queen. Five years later Marwan was murdered,
A.D. 750.
The modern town of Tudmur consists now, as it did
in Dr. Halifax's time, of some thirty or forty miserable
little houses grouped near the large temple, and in the
evening the Ka'im Makam took me there and showed
me some very fine Palmyrene busts, and a large miscellaneous
collection of small objects of various periods.
I pointed out some eight or ten busts with names and
dates cut on the slabs, which I said we should like to
have in the British Museum, and the Ka'im Makam
undertook to send them to London. In due course
they arrived and were purchased by the Trustees, and
they are now in the Semitic Room in the Second
Northern Gallery. The violent changes of weather and
the sudden alternations of heat and cold make Tudmur
a very unhealthy place to live in. The day had been
warm and pleasant, but two hours after sunset the cold
was intense and it seemed to be impossible to get warm.
About I a.m., on November 7th, a violent thunder-storm
broke over us quite suddenly, and the deluge of rain came
upon us so quickly that the flat ground where our tent was
pitched became a pool of water in a few minutes.
Muhammad and I and the beasts took refuge in the
great temple, but there was not much sleep to be had
that night. When day broke the whole plain was
covered with a dense white fog in which the smell of
sulphur was strong.