Palmyra’s Lion of Al-lat restored

The statue of a lion holding a crouching gazelle from the 1^st century AD was one of the two hundred sculptures located at the Museum of Palmyra that were destroyed by IS as only four of them survived the 2015 attack intact.

We have to thank Polish archaeologists and renovators for their rescue mission one year later. They collected as many fragments and as much rubble they could. They filled 80 cases with the antiquities and moved them to Damascus in order to restore whatever they could.

[Picture from The First News]

Their reward is this spectacular reconstruction of the three meter tall Lion of Al-lat that stood in front of the museum after it was discovered in 1977 by Polish archaeologists. It must have felt as their child and they are, of course, extremely proud to have been able to piece the battered lion together again.

Much and much more work is still required to restore whatever possible from the heaps of debris taken from the museum to Damascus.

Palmyra itself is a totally different story as many of the monuments have been blown to bits, including the ancient Temple of Baal, the small Temple of Bel-Shamin, the Monumental Arch, the Roman Theater, the Tetrapylon, and the Tower Tombs. Elsewhere in statues have been defaced and members cut off.

There is hope to bring ancient Palmyra back to what it was before the war but I fear that this goal will never be reached – in spite of being on the World Heritage list of the UNESCO.