Islamic State militants are feared to have seized the secrets of Palmyra after the director of antiquities fled following his father’s public beheading.
Walid Asaad escaped the ancient city with his two brothers, his mother and his wife minutes after Khaled Asaad, 81, was murdered. After a six-day trek through the desert, Mr Asaad said that he had reached the Syrian government-held city of Homs on Sunday.
He was forced to leave behind crucial documents on the ancient city, which was one of the most popular tourist sites in Syria before the 2011 revolution — information that he said he feared would fall into the hands of Isis.
Included on his hard drive and computer were photographs, full maps of the archaeological digs, and details of present missions and what used to be in the city’s stores.
He arrived in Homs as news broke that Isis had blown up the ancient temple of Baal Shamin at the site, which the jihadists consider idolatrous. The destruction was branded a war crime and an immense loss to humanity by the UN yesterday.
Advertisement
Palmyra, a Unesco world heritage site, fell to Isis militants in May. Archaeologists feared that the jihadists would destroy the ruins. However, Mr Asaad said that the jihadists had initially seemed more interested in personal enrichment.
“They came to our houses, armed with huge guns, and took us in several times. They held me for four days and kept asking me where the gold was, the jewellery, the rings and crowns. They were focused on the treasures,” he said.
“Both my father and I said there had not been gold at Palmyra for decades, that the archaeological missions didn’t really find any treasures. But they were persistent.”
Syrian government officials reported that all moveable relics had been evacuated from Palmyra before Isis fighters took control, a line repeated by Mr Asaad and his father. His father was told that he was being taken for one final “brief questioning”, but it lasted for 27 days before he was beheaded.
The fighters strung up his headless and blood-spattered corpse on a traffic light in a public square, behind a placard accusing him of being a spy, an apostate and a “director of ideology”.
Advertisement
“They promised us they were treating him well and he would be OK, but they kept lying,” Mr Asaad said. “Within an hour of learning of my father’s death, we took anything we could and fled.”
Mr Asaad, who took over as director of antiquities after his father retired in 2003, travelled with his family near the Isis-held stronghold of Raqqa, moving in the dead of night. They made it through Isis checkpoints undiscovered, circling the main towns to avoid being detained. On Sunday — after six days on the road — they arrived in Homs. The family’s property was seized by Isis after they fled.
“Our worst fears are sadly being realised,” Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s antiquities chief, said in describing Sunday’s destruction of the temple. “The cella [inner area of the temple] was destroyed and the columns around collapsed.”
Augusta McMahon, an expert in Ancient Near East history at the University of Cambridge, said that the temple honoured a Babylonian storm or weather god. She said that it was likely to have been selected for destruction because it was particularly well-preserved and beautiful.
Palmyra, known as the Pearl of the Desert, had survived for 2,000 years largely intact. The sprawling site includes temples, government buildings, an amphitheatre, market place, more than 1,000 columns and 500 elaborate tombs in four cemeteries.
Advertisement
The oldest ruins dated back to Palmyra’s founding as an oasis on a desert caravan route between the Gulf and the Mediterranean. It was used by traders of spices, perfumes, silk and ivory from the east, and statues and glasswork from Phoenicia.
The earliest written tablet on the site is from the 19th century BC, although Palmyra reached its peak in the 1st century AD when it was declared a free city by the Roman emperor Hadrian.
The UN cultural watchdog Unesco describes the site as “the monumental ruins of a great city that was one of the most important cultural centres of the Ancient World”.
Yesterday the organisation reacted with outrage. “This destruction is a new war crime and an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity,” Irina Bokova, Unesco’s director-general, said as she called for the perpetrators to be held accountable.
“Daesh [Isis] is killing people and destroying sites, but cannot silence history and will ultimately fail to erase this great culture from the memory of the world.”