It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast

we are talking about one of the most remarkable cities of the ancient Near East. Palmyra.

Situated in the Syrian desert near an oasis, Palmyra it was an ancient trading city, it

was immensely wealthy, in more recent times it was informously damaged by ISIS a few years

back. Now to talk through the extraordinary history of Palmyra I was delighted to get on

the show Dr Ted Kaiser from the University of Durham. Ted is a lecturer in Roman culture

and history. He has written extensively about the ancient Near East and on the city of

Palmyra, including also on the nearby city of Dura Europos which we've done a podcast

on also. Without further ado, here is Ted to talk through all things Palmyra.

Ted it's great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. Now Palmyra this was one of

the great jewels of the Near East. It is a very famous caravan city in the heart of the Syrian

desert so perhaps we should start by saying that the location of Palmyra is really key to

everything. It is a city whose ruins are situated in the middle of the Syrian desert more or

less between the big cities in the west of the modern country Syria, Damascus and Homs,

ancient Emesa, on the one hand and on the other hand towards the east, the river Euphrates

and Palmyra is more or less 200 kilometers in either direction. It is located at an oasis

in the middle of the step area, the desert area, the oasis of TAPMOR which is the city's

indigenous name and indeed still the mother name. So is it this location between the Persian

Gulf and the Mediterranean? Is that what leads to its building whenever it was founded?

Well we don't know when it was founded as such. It's an important point but there's nothing

interestingly to suggest an actual foundation as such. So the origins of Palmyra are hidden

in the midst of history in a way it seems very likely that there had been some sort of settlement

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