This four-volume publication in Brepols’ Archive Archaeology series marks the culmination of over a decade of research into the Danish archaeologist Harald Ingholt’s (1896–1985) materials on Palmyrene sculpture donated to Copenhagen’s Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in 1983.[1] The “Ingholt Archive” represents approximately 2000 images of ancient sculpture originating in Palmyra that Ingholt collected and curated during his career. Originally designed as a personal database of primary sources for his higher doctoral thesis and monograph, Studier over Palmyrensk Skulptur (1928), this invaluable archive has been turned into a monumental publication and accompanying open access resource.[2] It will prove truly transformative for specialists in the art of Palmyra, allowing comparative stylistic and chronological study of many artefacts for the first time, and superseding Ingholt’s own works for its quantity and presentation of primary sources. Through this book and its companions Excavating Palmyra (2021) and Studies on Palmyrene Sculpture (2021), it is possible to restore Ingholt’s significance for the study of the ancient city through his assessment of the funerary sculpture.
The editor of the Archive Archaeology series and director of the project, Rubina Raja, is joined as co-author by Jean-Baptiste Yon, who provides his expertise and insight into the epigraphy as he had done previously for the publication of Ingholt’s excavation diaries, Excavating Palmyra (2021).[3] The team of authors is completed by the ancient art historical specialism of Amy Miranda, and Olympia Bobou’s knowledge of ancient sculpture. The monumental scale of this four-volume publication spans almost two thousand pages and covers epigraphy, linguistics, archaeology and art history. It is also vital to emphasise the attention to detail and consistency evident in the digitisation and scanning process. Any lack of consistency in size and resolution of the images can be attested to Ingholt’s original documentation and the imperfect nature of the technology available to the archaeologist at the time rather than any inadequacies in the digitisation.
The first volume contains an introduction which explores the history of the archive, offering some biography on Ingholt and the objectives behind the publication including details of the commentary and the impact of the work. Catalogue entries for the images follow, over four volumes. Each image is accompanied by a commentary, of which the transcription of the inscription is the longest part. This offers a detailed description of the photograph and the decipherment of Ingholt’s often cryptic notes that are scribbled in various inks across many of the sheets. The commentary provides excellent supplementary material: from dating and description of the pieces to some bibliography, and Ingholt’s transliteration of the inscription, which is at times impossible to interpret from the photograph alone. This is followed by a translation of all inscriptions on the sculptures usually from Palmyrene Aramaic, though there are also some in Greek or Latin complete with the respective references to Palmyrene Aramaic Texts, Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum and Répertoire d’Épigraphie Sémitique.
Over five hundred of the images reproduced here were portrait busts originally examined for Ingholt’s 1928 work, Studier over Palmyrensk Skulptur, representing the first phase of the archaeologist’s interaction with the ancient city during his expeditions at the site under the French Mandate. What will interest Palmyra scholars and students of ancient sculpture is the unseen material including 146 objects that have never previously been published. The majority of these previously unpublished pieces (61) are in museums and institutions around the globe, whereas nineteen were in private collections at the time Ingholt consulted them; a further sixteen were known to Ingholt through private art dealers and auction houses — he served as curator of the American University of Beirut Archaeological Museum between 1931 and 1938 — while the provenance, location and ownership of some 43 artworks were unrecorded in the archive sheets and are now lost. Although the material may be missing, we are offered vestiges of these artefacts courtesy of this unique publication which takes readers behind the scenes of Ingholt’s publications and research into Palmyra’s extraordinary cultural footprint.
Indeed, one area where this catalogue can have a significant impact is on the global art market and the illicit trade in such antiquities. If one of these portrait busts appears on the market, the provenance can be interrogated or improved by consultation with the authors’ work and Ingholt’s original research. Items for which either the current location or their state of preservation is unknown, or that remain locked in private collections, can be viewed through the lens of Ingholt’s original database, tracing sculptures that have otherwise disappeared from public view. This is most tragically the case for the collections of the Palmyra Museum and other material remains then at the archaeological site that were mutilated by extremist militants during three occupations of the site between 2015 and 2017. The Palmyra Portrait Project commenced in 2012 before the irreparable damage suffered at the site and thus the value of this work has only increased given the events of the past decade. Ingholt’s images can help salvage a shadow of what has been lost to iconoclasm and the Syrian Civil War through this ground-breaking work that is an act of preservation for the ages as much as a herculean academic achievement.
Notes
[1] The three projects since 2012 on Palmyra include the Palmyra Portrait Project; Archive Archaeology: Preserving and Sharing Palmyra’s Cultural Heritage through Harald Ingholt’s Digital Archive; and Circular Economy and Urban Sustainability in Antiquity.
[2] Recently re-released as Olympia Bobou, Jesper Vestergaard Jensen, Nathalia Breintoft Kristensen, Rubina Raja, Rikke Randeris Thomsen, Studies on Palmyrene Sculpture: A Translation of Harald Ingholt’s Studier over Palmyrensk Skulptur, Edited and with Commentary, Studies in Palmyrene Archaeology and History, Vol. 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021.
[3] Rubina Raja, Jean-Baptiste Yon, Julia Steding, Excavating Palmyra Harald Ingholt’s Excavation Diaries: A Transcript, Translation, and Commentary, Studies in Palmyrene Archaeology and History, Vol. 4. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021.