Erasing Mankind’s Heritage: the Monuments of Palmyra and their Devastation

Dr. Clemens Reichel speaks at the San Antonio Museum of Art about the impact that the current conflicts in Syria and Iraq have had on cultural heritage sites and museums zones and what their loss would mean to all of humanity. While focusing on the intentional destruction of temples, monuments and museums on the historical site of Palmyra (with references to similar actions at Nimrud and Hatra) by the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS), he also discusses the collateral damage that historic cities such as Aleppo, which represent a loving testimony to Syria’s long and rich history, have suffered in the ongoing fighting between the Syrian government and opposition forces, and the extensive damage of archeological sites by looting as a result of economic deprivation of large segments of the population in the on-going war.

Dr. Reichel is Associate Professor for Mesopotamian Archaeology at the University of Toronto and Associate Curator for the Ancient Near East at the ROM. He has excavated and surveyed extensively on sites in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Between 2004-10 he has co-directed excavations at Hamoukar, a large Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age site in northeastern Syria, excavated jointly between the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute and the Syrian Department of Antiquities. In addition to his research on the rise of urbanism and the emergence of complex bureaucracy in the Ancient Near East he has also focused on issues of cultural heritage preservation in the Middle East.