ABSTRACT
Palmyra's key role as the gateway of the eastern trade was a thing of the past; gone was also its political influence. The raison d'etre of the tribal confederacy integrating sedentary and non-sedentary groups in the Palmyrene had been shared interest in the long-distance trade, its hinges being the tribal elites, who had bound city and steppe together. There was a lot of defensive work to do in Palmyra. The era of Persian–Roman detente, which had appeared with the loss of the Persian war initiated by Emperor Julian, was suddenly over in 502. In 627, the Roman Emperor Herakleios won a decisive victory over the Persians led by general Rhazates, near the ruins of Nineveh. Constantinople and the Persians concluded a peace treaty for the last time. After Syria had left the union with Egypt in 1961 and Hafiz al-Assad had come to power in 1970, Palmyra and Zenobia became index fossils of Baathist ideology.
