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Published: December 24th 2008
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Day 3 of the trip was cool. Literally. It is freezing here. So unbelievably cold. I can’t believe how cold it has been here. Much colder than home in NZ.
Day 3 saw us get up in Damascus bright and early. Mum and Dad were up at 6:30am for breakfast at the restaurant. I managed to get down there for 7:00am. Abdul picked us up at 8:00am and off we set for Palmyra.
The first stop for the day was actually at Palmyra. Just before lunch we went to see some old tombs. In particular we saw the tomb towers and a tomb that was located underground. The tomb tower were quite spectacular, there are about 4 stories high and along each side of the tomb there are niches. The tomb that we looked at (Elahbel tomb) was apparently a family tomb and could house up to around 300 people. There were niches in the sides of the walls of the towers and the bodies were mummified and then slid into these niches and the end of the niche was covered up with a bust of the person that had died. The underground tomb was built on the same
The squat toilets
mum was not impressed principle, except that it was underground. And was also delightfully warm. Apparently the underground tomb was a bit more like a public cemetery were wealthy people could buy entire sections for themselves and there families. The underground tomb was also covered in some lovely frescoes. One in particular was showing a scene from a greek myth, the moment when Achilles discovered his true nature.
After we visited the tombs we went to lunch at a lovely little café that was part of the hotel that Abdul is staying at. We are staying at a 5 star hotel just down the road from the ruins at Palmyra itself. Our first stop after lunch was at the Temple of Baal. This is a very old temple that has at various stages in its life been pagan (worshiping Baal), Christian and then Muslim. We (well at least I decided) that we should engage the services of a guide to take us around the ruins of Baal Temple. Our guide was a gentleman called Mohammed. He was a lovely guy who explained all the history of the temple to us. We learnt all about the different carvings in the temple, where the animals
were sacrificed, where they altar to Mecca was, where Baal was worshiped etc. Baal was the Palmyrian God of Gods (similar to Zeus and Jupiter etc).
From the temple we went up to the castle on the top of the hill. The view from up there was truly quite spectacular. You could see all over Palmyra. You could see the cardo maximus, the temple etc. It was freezing up at the top of the castle though. But the view was totally spectacular.
From the castle we went down to the museum in Palmyra where were found the bust that had been removed from the entrances to the tomb niches. They were actually quite lovely. Some of the busts were of single people but then others were of entire families. They also had four mummified bodies up on the top floor of the museum. They looked a little bit spooky really. One of them was unwrapped and you could see where some of the skin was still on his scalp.
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