Homs, known in pre-Islamic Syria as Emesa, is a city in western Syria and the capital of the Homs Governorate. It is 501 metres (1,644 ft) above sea level and is located 162 kilometres (101 mi) north of Damascus. Located on the Orontes River, Homs is also the central link between the interior cities and the Mediterranean coast.
Septimius Odaenathus was the founder king (Mlk) of the Palmyrene Kingdom who ruled from Palmyra, Syria. He elevated the status of his kingdom from a regional center subordinate to Rome into a formidable state in the Near East. Odaenathus was born into an aristocratic Palmyrene family that had received Roman citizenship in the 190s under the Severan dynasty. He was the son of Hairan, the descendant of Nasor. The circumstances surrounding his rise are ambiguous; he became the lord (ras) of the city, a position created for him, as early as the 240s and by 258, he was styled a consularis, indicating a high status in the Roman Empire.
A nefesh is a Semitic monument placed near a grave so as to be seen from afar.
Kom el-Hisn is a Nile Delta settlement dating back to the Old Kingdom of Egypt with parts dating to the Middle Kingdom. Its location in the 3rd nome of Lower Egypt, or "House of the Lord of Ships ", focus on the goddess Hathor, as well as faunal and textual evidence suggests it played a role in transporting cattle between regions. Whether or not it was a self-sufficient town or built solely to support the temple is currently unknown.
The Emesenedynasty, also called the Sampsigeramids or the Sampsigerami or the House of Sampsigeramus, were a Roman client dynasty of Syrian priest-kings known to have ruled by 46 BC from Arethusa and later from Emesa, Syria, until between 72 and 78/79, or at the latest the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius (138–161). Iamblichus, the famous Neoplatonist philosopher of the third century, was one of their descendants, as was empress Julia Domna, matriarch of the Severan dynasty.
In early modern scholarship, a cult to a supposed Heliopolitan Triad of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury was thought to have originated in ancient Canaanite religion, adopted and adapted firstly by the Greeks, and then by the Romans when they colonised the city of Heliopolis in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon. The Canaanite god Baʿal (Hadad) was equated with Jupiter Heliopolitanus as sun-god, Astarte or Atargatis with Venus Heliopolitana as his wife, and Adon, the god of spring, with either Mercury or Dionysus as third member of the triad, son of Heliopolitan Venus and Heliopolitan Jupiter.
Henri Arnold Seyrig was a French archaeologist, numismatist, and historian. He was the general director of antiquities of Syria and Lebanon since 1929, and director, for more than twenty years, of the Institute of Archaeology of Beirut.
Khalid ibn al-Walid Stadium is a multi-use stadium located in the Syrian city of Homs. It is the 3rd-largest football stadium in Syria and is mostly used for football matches. It serves as the home ground of Al-Karamah SC and Al-Wathba SC and holds around 32,000 spectators.
Al-Rawda is a tell, or archaeological settlement mound, in the Syrian steppe, east of Hama. It was a large urban site with city walls and several temples, occupied between 2400–2000 BC. A French–Syrian mission has been excavating the site since 2002.
Gaius Julius Sampsiceramus, "from the Fabia tribe, also known as Seilas, son of Gaius Julius Alexion," was the builder of a mausoleum that formerly stood in the necropolis of Tell Abu Sabun, as recorded on an inscription said to have belonged to the monument. His relatedness to the Sampsigeramids has been deemed possible, probable, or has even been accepted, in which case through Gaius Julius Alexion.
Hairan II was a Palmyrene prince, the son of king Odaenathus and, possibly, his second wife Zenobia.
Alan Jenvey Rowe was a British archaeologist most famous for his studies on ancient Egypt. Rowe was an Egyptologist and lecturer in Near Eastern Archaeology in Manchester University.
The Emesa helmet is a Roman cavalry helmet from the early first century AD. It consists of an iron head piece and face mask, the latter of which is covered in a sheet of silver and presents the individualised portrait of a face, likely its owner. Decorations, some of which are gilded, adorn the head piece. Confiscated by Syrian police soon after looters discovered it amidst a complex of tombs in the modern-day city of Homs in 1936, eventually the helmet was restored thoroughly at the British Museum, and is now in the collection of the National Museum of Damascus. It has been exhibited internationally, although as of 2017, due to the Syrian civil war, the more valuable items owned by the National Museum are hidden in underground storage.
The Tomb of Sampsigeramus was a mausoleum that formerly stood in the necropolis of Emesa. It is thought to have been built in 78 or 79 CE by a relative of the Emesene dynasty. The remains of the mausoleum were blown up with dynamite by the Ottoman authorities c. 1911, in order to make room for an oil depot.
Odaenathus, the king of Palmyra from 260 to 267 CE, has been identified by modern scholars as the subject of sculptures, seal impressions, and mosaic pieces. His city was part of the Roman Empire, and he came to dominate the Roman East when in 260 he defeated Shapur I, the Sasanian emperor of Persia, who had invaded the Roman Empire. Odaenathus besieged the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon in 263, and although the city did not fall, the campaign led to a full restoration of Roman provinces taken by Shapur I. In the aftermath of his Persian war, Odaenathus assumed the title King of Kings, which was a challenge to the Persian monarch's claims of authority in the region. Odaenathus ruled the Roman East unopposed with imperial consent. In 267, he was assassinated alongside his eldest son Herodianus while conducting a campaign against Germanic raiders in Bithynia; he was succeeded by his son Vaballathus under the regency of the widow queen Zenobia.
Jabal al-Bilas is a desert height located 500 meters above sea level in Syria.
The Thrones of Astarte are approximately a dozen ex-voto "cherubim" thrones found in ancient Phoenician temples in Lebanon, in particular in areas around Sidon, Tyre and Umm al-Amad. Many of the thrones have a similar style, with cherubim heads on winged lion bodies on either side. Images of the thrones are found in Phoenician sites around the Mediterranean, including an ivory plaque from Tel Megiddo (Israel), a relief from Hadrumetum (Tunisia) and a scarab from Tharros (Italy).
The royal necropolis of Byblos is a group of nine Bronze Age underground shaft and chamber tombs housing the sarcophagi of several kings of the city. Byblos is a coastal city in Lebanon, and one of the oldest continuously populated cities in the world. The city established major trade links with Egypt during the Bronze Age, resulting in a heavy Egyptian influence on local culture and funerary practices. The location of ancient Byblos was lost to history, but was rediscovered in the late 19th century by the French biblical scholar and Orientalist Ernest Renan. The remains of the ancient city sat on top of a hill in the immediate vicinity of the modern city of Jbeil. Exploratory trenches and minor digs were undertaken by the French mandate authorities, during which reliefs inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs were excavated. The discovery stirred the interest of western scholars, leading to systematic surveys of the site.
The National Museum of Utica is a museum dedicated to archeology in Tunisia located in Utica. The museum is dedicated to preserving important historical objects from the history of North African civilizations.
The Palmyra Tariff is an ancient bilingual limestone inscription discovered in Palmyra, Syria. Dating to the 2nd century CE, the inscription provides valuable insights into the economic and political structure of the city and the wider Roman Empire. It is the longest lapidary Aramaic inscription ever found.
