Recherche par auteur > Lenaghan Julia

This paper aims to review the sculptural finds of the “l'edifice aux statues", subsequently also called “le sénat” or more neutrally “l'edifice à banquette semi-circulaire.” Excavated by Raymond Duru in 1940, the five marble statues, which gave their name initially to the building, have received repeated and excellent attention. The attention has focused mainly on issues of manufacture, typology, and chronology. Scholars readily recognized the headless statues as portraits because the two male figures are dressed in Roman togas and the three female figures are versions of the most common body types used for honorific statues of women in the Roman world, the “Pudicitia” and the “Large” and “Small Herculaneum” types. More speculative but equally thought-provoking have been attempts to identify the statues as honours for Septimius Odainat and his family. Here we revisit the contextual aspects of these statues considering the advances in our understanding of the city of Palmyra -- its archaeology, art, industry, and epigraphy--, of the marble business in Syria, and of the habit of statue honours in the entire Roman Empire. That is, we reflect on the find location, the possible original aspect of the complete monument, and the importance of such traditional “western” figures within the city.