Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (16.2004(2005))

PALMYRA

SYRIA


The new Director of the Museum, Khalil al-
Hariri, provided us with an opportunity to
regroup all of the earlier and more recent
finds of the mission in a single room. All
sculptures and fragments found during more
than forty years of excavation were now ar-
ranged on shelves installed specially for the
purpose. The small finds, until now out of
view in the casual cardboard boxes and con-
tainers used for packing after each season,
were laid out in three showcases provided
by the Museum. This much needed work
was accomplished mainly by Marta Zuchow-
ska, Dagmara Wielgosz, and later by Grze-
gorz Majcherek. Karol Juchniewicz assist-
ed them, documenting objects whenever
the need arose.
This tidying was not without its uses.
The most spectacular discovery came when
fragments of four archaic honorific statues
from the sanctuary of Allat were fitted
together. They were immediately reassem-
bled and installed in the museum gallery
by art restorer Bartosz Markowski {Fig. 2}.2
Other sculptures from the Allat sanctuary
were studied by Dagmara Wielgosz with
a view to an upcoming publication. Alek-
sandra Trochimowicz reviewed the stucco
fragments and prepared some of them for
display.
Pottery material from previous seasons
was reviewed and classified by Grzegorz
Majcherek, while Krystyna Gawlikowska
studied the glass fragments in preparation
for an overall publication.
The present writer was busy cataloguing
a hoard of Sasanian coins found in 2001.3 It
consisted of silver dirhams of the later pe-
riod and included 694 readable pieces and

over 50 unreadable ones, not counting
minute fragments. While most of the coins
were minted under Khusro II and collected
during the Persian occupation of Syria (612-
628), there were also a few Arab-Sasanian
issues from the end of the 7th century AD.
The hoard was apparently closed before the
monetary reform of Abdel Malik.
Another of the season's tasks was to de-
sign a shelter to be erected over the mosaic
discovered in 2002-2003.4 Consultations
with colleagues at the DGAM led to the
decision to exhibit this nearly complete


Fig. 2. Restoration work on the archaic statues
in the gallery of Allat
(Photo M. Gawlikowski)

2 See his and A.Trochimowicz's contribution in this volume.
3 Cf. PAM XIII. Reports 2001 (2002), 266-269.
4 Cf. PAM XV, Reports 2003 (2004), 313-324.

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