A Stern Solace? Palmyrene Funerary Portraits as Emotional Recipients (20 min)

Presenters

Bilal Annan, University of Groningen

Abstract

When considering the layout and decoration of monumental tombs in Palmyra’s necropoleis in the first three centuries C.E., modern observers find themselves facing a puzzling interpretative equation. The monumental character and lavish decoration of these tombs, the epigraphic and iconographic emphasis placed on the tomb founders, the ubiquity of funerary portraiture, and the epitaphs accompanying these portraits, which focus on the deceased’s social identity and lineage, all attest to the Palmyrene community’s obsession with the memorial perpetuation of the deceased and the manifestation of their social status. As funerary environments, these tombs were also conceived as spaces for emotional expression. Yet one does not detect prima facie in the ornamentation of these monuments any overt intent on the part of patrons at conveying grief and compassion, vivifying emotions that one would expect to be instilled in tomb visitors. In their very tombs, the Palmyrene seem to have been adamant at keeping death, both as a biological process and a socially disruptive event, at bay.

This paper proposes to evaluate the “emotional investment” placed in Palmyrene tombs: What range of emotions was favored in these sanitized environments, where corpses were hidden away in sarcophagi or behind loculi slabs on which portrayed individuals were petrified in seemingly repetitive and absorbed attitudes? Was it all about social prestige and the illustration of kinship, as it is often assumed? Or can we, under this rather heavy lid of affective discretion, find any evidence for more vivid interactions with the deceased and their framing monumenta, and recover more eloquent emotional remains? By focusing on the display context of funerary portraits, their iconographic characteristics, and the associated archaeological finds in a selection of tombs, this paper will illustrate how Palmyrene portraits were designed to elicit various emotional responses from the bereaved.