When archives and books come to the rescue of Palmyra, the pearl of the desert!
To coincide with the signing of an agreement between the International Alliance for the Protection of Cultural Property in Conflict Zones(ALIPH) and the Collart-Palmyra project of the Institut d’archéologie et des sciences de l’antiquité(IASA), the head of the Antiquarian Sciences collection presents a selection of documents on the Syrian city of Palmyra. Discover this thematic selection in the Renouvaud catalog.
How can photographs and films help us to preserve our material (and memorial) heritage? A short introduction…
Palmyra
Paul Collart was 52 when he discovered Palmyra during a trip to the Middle East. In 1953, he was sent by UNESCO to draw up an inventory of the cultural assets of Syria and Lebanon. And from 1954 to 1956, he organized the first exclusively Swiss archaeological mission on foreign soil. Three campaigns, followed by verification in 1966, uncovered the Ballshamîn sanctuary, a 2nd-century temple in Palmyra.
Born in 1902 into a family of Genevan architects, Paul Collart developed an interest in Antiquity and studied Classics at the University of Geneva. A foreign member of the Ecole française d’Athènes from 1926 onwards, he travelled throughout Greece and the surrounding region with his camera, bringing back almost 4,000 photographs. He thus created a photographic memory of the ancient world. His rigorous, detailed images of archaeological remains were used to illustrate both his publications and the lectures he gave as Professor of Ancient History at the University of Lausanne and later at the University of Geneva.
Palmyra is an important milestone on this journey. An oasis in the Syrian desert, Palmyra, with its colonnaded streets, temples and tombs, was at its height in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. One of its main temples, Baalshamîn, dedicated to the “Lord of Heaven”, was completed in 130 and features a six-column façade.
In its logic of annihilating pre-Islamic sites, Daech destroyed the temple in August 2015. Only photographic traces and excavation reports still allow us to restore this sumptuous face of the so-called Pearl of the Desert, Palmyra.
Angkor-Vat
Henri Stierlin was 38 when he discovered the temple of Angkor-Vat during a report he made for Télévision Suisse Romande in Cambodia in 1966, accompanied by Pierre Barde.
Born in Alexandria in 1928, Henri Stierlin is an art and architecture historian. After classical studies in Latin and Greek, as well as a law degree, he became a journalist in the written press, then moved on to radio and finally television. It was for the latter that, with Pierre Barde, he created the documentary series L’homme à la recherche de son passéwhich took him around the world, camera in hand, to produce 45 30-minute programs: Pharaonic Egypt, pre-Columbian Mexico, ancient Greece, Achaemenid and Islamic Iran, Greco-Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Turkey, ancient Syria, ancient Jordan, Roman and medieval Spain, the Etruscans, Buddhist, Hindu and Mughal India, and the Khmers of Angkor.
Cambodia is their last expedition. And the bas-reliefs of Angkor-Vat temple are patiently filmed: the tracking shot even gives us the impression of seeing the dancers in the bas-reliefs move gracefully…
Angkor-Vat is the largest temple in Cambodia’s monumental Angkor complex. It was built by Suryavarman II in the early 12th century. Through a clever optical trick, its three levels appear to be in one piece. Its moat symbolizes the primordial ocean, from which emerge five mountains (the temple towers), sacred abodes of the gods. Initially Hindu and dedicated to Vishnu, it became Buddhist and has remained an important religious site ever since its foundation.
From 1967-1968, the country was faced with an insurrection fomented by the Khmer Rouge. However, no fighting took place on the Angkor site itself, even though the demarcation line between the enemies was close, and the Angkor-Vat site was preserved… with the notable exception of the Buddha statues: the effect of the Khmer Rouge’s hostility to contemporary Buddhism. As a result, Stierlin’s film retains a trace of the Angkor-Vat Buddha bas-reliefs. Once again, film saves our memory.
And you, how old were you when you visited the remains that have since disappeared?
Follow a 2021 report on Angkor-Vat: Cambodia’s Angkor threatened by a gigantic theme park.
Evelyne Barman Crotti
Head of the Ancient Sciences Collection, BCUL site Unithèque
