Temple of Bel

The temple rises on a tell occupied since the third millennium BC, above an earlier Hellenistic temple. The English and Arabic Wikipedias date its dedication to AD 32, the Arabic article citing a statue-base inscription of 6 Nisan in the Seleucid year 343; the German Wikipedia gives 32 BC instead. The porticoes of the court were built between about 80 and 120, the western portico only around the mid-second century. Aurelian's troops pillaged the temple in 273, and the emperor then had it repaired.[1][2][3][4]

A wall about 205 m long enclosed a paved court lined with Corinthian porticoes, entered through the west gate. On a podium in the middle stood the cella, surrounded by columns. Unusually for a Roman-type temple, its entrance lay on a long side; inside were two shrines, north and south, as well as windows and stairs to roof terraces.[1][2]

The temple was closed between 385 and 388 under the praetorian prefect Maternus Cynegius and became a church in the Byzantine period. Under the Umayyads part of it served as a congregational mosque; from 1132 the precinct was a citadel enclosing the village of Tadmur. The mosque and houses remained in use until Franco-Syrian archaeologists cleared the precinct in the 1920s (the Arabic Wikipedia gives 1930).[1][3][4]

The ceiling of the northern shrine showed a deity amid the seven planets and the twelve signs of the zodiac. A relief with a camel carrying the god's image and veiled women documents the festival processions. UNESCO counts the temple among the most important religious buildings of the first century AD in the East.[1][3][5]

IS blew up the temple building on 30 August 2015; on 31 August UNITAR confirmed from satellite imagery the destruction of the main building and an adjacent row of columns. The entrance arch and the outer walls survived. In July 2017 the French company Art Graphique et Patrimoine scanned the rubble as a basis for restoration planning.[1][2]