THE VALLEY OF THE TOMBS

 There are enormous cemeteries all around the city, but it is above all on the slopes of the hills to the east that the ancient tombs have been furnished new evidence about Palmyrene civilization. There are four types of burial place to be found here: the tomb-tower (a square structure with narrow windows), the house - tomb (the one that stands in the perspective from the Great Colonnade for example), the hypogeum-tower (a stairway linking a network of underground chambers inside a tomb-tower, and finally the hypogeum tomb, built to receive the bodies of one family over a period of two centuries, a real underground house decorated with frescoes, each cell of which is sealed with a sculpture representing with deceased.

There is a guided tour of the most remarkable of the tombs. These include to the north of the city, beyond the ramparts, the so-called Marona house-tomb, behind Diocletianis Camp the Jamblique tomb-tower, built in 83 A.D., and 500 meters further on, up the hill, the tomb-tower of the Elhabel family, 103 A.D. Near the latter, on the edge of the sandy road, is a hypogeum tower, from the terrace of which, in the evening, there is a fine view over Palmyra. Near the top of the hillside there is an entrance at ground level, to the hypogeum of Atenatan which was dug in 98. But the most impressive of all the underground tombs is that known as the Tomb of the Three Brothers (at the beginning of the Valley of the Tombs), which contains some four hundred niches and whose walls are covered with frescoes in a remarkable state of preservation. If you climb the hill crowned by a 17th century fort you wit be rewarded by a magnificent general view of Palmyra the ruins, the market.