Just one day after UN training and research agency UNITAR had confirmed via satellite images that Palmyra's Baalshamin Temple was destroyed by Islamic State militants, ARCA has received word from multiple direct and indirect sources that The Temple of Bel has also been targeted.  The temple is aligned along the eastern end of the Great Colonnade at Palmyra and its epigraphic remains attest to the temple's dedication in 32 C.E.  After that, it underwent changes through the course of both the first and second centuries. Since the spread of Islam in the 7th century the Temple of Bel has been used as a mosque though the 1920s.

Temple of Bel - North Adyton Ceiling, North Adyton and South Adyton

The Temple of Bel's cella are unique.  Two inner sanctuaries, the north and south adytons ((a restricted area within the cella of a Greek or Roman temple) are dedicated as the shrines of Bel and other local deities. Both the North and the South chambers had monolithic ceilings. The Northern chamber’s ceiling highlighted seven planets surrounded by twelve zodiac carvings as well as a camel procession, a veiled women, and what is believed to be Makkabel, the god of fertility.  While many believed the temple's repurposing as a mosque would have offered it protection, this imagery may have been the target for destruction under Daesh idiology.

The Islamic State took control of the historic site of Ancient Palmyra on the May 21, 2015.  The extent of the damage to the Roman-era structure is still being investigated.

Due to the number of conflicting reports, ARCA has been continually aggregating reports on the status of the Temple of Bel as more conclusive information came in and could be corroborated.

Update September 01, 2015 07:30 GMT+1 At 7:30 this morning, ARCA posted word that the UN Training and Research Agency (UNITAR) had confirmed that satellite images received have confirmed that the Temple of Bel, in the ancient city of Palmyra in northern Syria has been destroyed. Tom Holland, and London-based writer and historian gave this sad, but fitting eulogy, which we have included in the satellite photo caption below.

"The temple of Bel in Palmyra, dedicated when Tiberius was emperor and Jesus was alive. For 1983 years it stood largely intact. Now – confirmed, gone --Tom Holland

UN Training and Research Agency (UNITAR) posted news of their satellite and image analysis shortly after midnight.  Their written statement reads "We can confirm destruction of the main building of the Temple of Bel as well as a row of columns in its immediate vicinity."

Einar Bjorgo, manager of UNITAR’s Operational Satellite Applications Programme - (UNOSAT) said a satellite image taken Monday "unfortunately shows the destruction of the temple's main building as well as a row of columns in its immediate vicinity."

Image Credit/Image analysis: UNITAR-UNOSAT Copyright Airbus Defense and Space - Findings , based on two images: one taken on Aug. 27 which showed the main building and columns still intact and one post destruction.
Update August 31, 2015 15:10 GMT+1 Speaking to the Associated Press via Skype today, an Islamic State operative has said that the temple (of Bel) had been destroyed, without elaborating. The individual spoke on condition of anonymity because members of the group are not allowed to speak to journalists.

Update August 31, 2015 15:10 GMT+1 Director-General of Syria’s Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) issues a formal statement on their website which reads, in part, "DGAM could not verify this news with confident resources, so the act is not sure nor the size of destruction, hoping it is not true."

Update August 31, 2015 14:30 GMT+1 New York Times article, quoting Syria's Director-General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM), Maumoon Abdul-Karim, seems to indicate the two inner sanctuaries, the north and south adytons, were the target in this attack on Palmyra's immovable heritage.

Update August 31, 2015 14:15 GMT+1 Reached in Damascus, Maumoon Abdul-Karim, the Director-General of Syria’s Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) has told the Guardian “The temple structure is on a raised terrace that can be seen from afar, and our information is that the temple is still there,” 

Update August 31, 2015 13:36 GMT+1 Speaking to the Associated Press via Skype today, an Islamic State operative has said that the temple (of Bel) had been destroyed, without elaborating. The individual spoke on condition of anonymity because members of the group are not allowed to speak to journalists.

Update August 31, 2015 09:38 GMT+1 A report by Business Insider stated that Mohamed Hassan al-Homsi, an activist from Tadmor who uses a pseudonym, had indicated that the group has used explosives to destroy the inner part of the temple.  Al-Homsi is reported to have said

"They laid the explosives today, using booby-trapped boxes and barrels that were already prepared by IS”

The report also stated that Maumoon Abdul-Karim, the Director-General of Syria’s Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) was reached by phone in Damascus, but that he could not yet confirm the destruction.  Professor Abdul-Karim said

"Rumours about these ruins are always coming out so we have to be careful about news like this."

Update August 31, 2015 03:38 GMT+1 Report via the Washington Post states that a contact in Hom’s outside Islamic State territory, using the pseudonym, Khaled al-Homsi, collaborates reports that the Temple of Bel was blown up Sunday afternoon.

Update August 31, 2015 00:36 GMT+1 An Al Jazeera reporter in the Syrian city of Homs was told that ISIL on Sunday detonated more than 30 tonnes of explosives.  Note: 30 tones would be a significant amount of explosives. If this is correct, the size and sound of the explosion would likely have resembled something similar to what is seen in this video. 
Update August 30, 2015 23:15 GMT+1 AP and CBS and news reported that a resident, possibly from Tadmor and going by the name "Nasser al-Thaer" reported that a substantial blast went off at 1:45 pm Sunday afternoon. This contact also reported "it is total destruction" and that "the bricks and the columns are on the ground."   This witness may be the same person who spoke with AP reporters who confirmed the destruction of Palmyra's Baalshamin Temple Destruction and who previously reported to Syria Deeply on July 21, 2015 that bombs had been planted in the historic temples of Bel and Baal Shamin. 

Update August 30, 2015 22:10 GMT +1 The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has also received word that the temple was targeted but has no further information on the extent of the damage.

Image Credit: Khan Academy

Don’t blame the mermaid.

In some places of the world, art is always welcome. Greece used to be one of those places. We must still want to think it is, but between news outlets reporting that illicit antiquities are being sold by the hundreds every day and local artists being ‘fined’ for creating public art, makes it pretty impossible to argue for that statement.

Greek artists, Dionysus Karipidis, created his reclining mermaid in 1997 long rocky coastline on the east side of Sithonia, by orange beach in Chalkidiki. The sculpture, carved into the shoreline, made the specific beach and the area surrounding it very popular.  Since its creation it has enjoyed the love and attention of the locals as well as visitors who sometimes travelled to there mainly to see the beautiful sandstone mermaid.

But unfortunately, the people visiting next time, won’t be able to enjoy the same pleasure, as the artist was fined by the tourist police for the “destruction of the natural landscape” for his rendering of the natural stone and who in frustration has destroyed it. 

The reclining mermaid was 6.6 meters long and took Karipidis over three months to carve. The artist used the rocks already existing along the shoreline, but the government claims that in doing so he has harmed the natural habitat and has therefore fined the artist 533.61 euros. After several protest letters and refusing to pay the fine, the artist stripped naked, since this is a nudist beach, and destroyed the the mermaid little by little, until there was no longer trace of it.

Photo Credit: Video Capture Antenna News, Greece

There’s a competition in this story about which could potentially be the worst part? The fact that a beautiful piece of sculpture in the sea is considered ‘dangerous’? The fact that the artist is cornered and almost forced to destroy his work? That fact that paying the fine once, doesn’t necessarily mean you never have to pay it again? What about the amount? To some 533 euros might seem like a pretty insignificant amount to pay when there are works navigating the art market every day that reach stratospheric prices in the thousands and even millions of dollars. 

Personally, I doubt this particular case had to do with the fine. It was a matter of principle and of common sense. Allowing a piece of art as non invasive and encompassed in nature as this one live would have ‘harmed’ the natural habitat much less than its absence will harm the local people and the visitors.

Now we are left with an heart broken artist, heart broken people and the government is 500 euros short.  How will we ever survive that?

A witness, using the name Nasser al-Thaer, spoke with journalists affiliated with the AP saying

A 25-year-old activist, also going by the name Nasser al-Thaer, had previous spoken with the organization Syria Deeply reporting on conditions inside Tadmur,  the modern city situated about 500 metres (1⁄3 mi) northeast of the ancient historical site of Palmyra.

An Islamic State operative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity with journalists from the AP, confirmed that the organisation would be issuing its own statement soon.

The United Nations Scien­tific and Cultural body (UNESCOn) has stated that the temple's destruction was “an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity”.  The head of UNESCO, Irina Bokova has also called the heinous act a “war crime”.

At the time of this reporting, five photos of the destruction of the temple have recently been released by by Islamic militants and distributed on social media.  The images show explosives set at the historic site, a mushroom cloud image freeze-framing the explosion and the resulting rubble.

Out of respect for the people of Syria, the residents of Tadmur and those that have lost their lives in the protection of Syria's cultural heritage, ARCA will not be publishing ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State, Daesh, Daish heritage "snuff" videos of the temple's destruction.

To not spread further

Article reprinted in its entirety with the consent of the author, Alexander Baunov, senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center.  The original link to this article can be found here. 

On August 16 a group of ultra-conservative activists vandalized an art exhibition in Manege Square next to the Kremlin in Moscow. Shouting that the exhibition was offensive to Christianity, they smashed sculptures and ripped canvases by well-known Russian artists Vadim Sidur and Megasoma Mars.

What happened at Manege Square has been described as "disorderly conduct" and it may be prosecuted as such if the case comes to trial. But it is more appropriate to call it a terrorist attack by religious extremists, like the acts of cultural destruction carried out by ISIS in Palmyra, Nineveh or Mosul.

In Moscow, at first glance, the target of the wrath of the zealots was even more of a surprise than their actual behavior: they attacked classical Russian rather than modern art. Thirty years after his death, Vadim Sidur has become a classic, exhibited all over the world. The gallery at the Manege is a state museum. This seems to be have been part of the attackers' plan: a mainstream gallery in the center of the capital was an effective forum to air an extremist statement, demanding the government change its policies on culture.

The Russian government condemned the Manege vigilantes--after a brief pause. Prominent parliamentarian Konstantin Kosachev called the attack "a disgusting story." But as with the murder of liberal politician Boris Nemtsov in February, the attack on the art exhibition presents the government with a dilemma. When Nemtsov was killed, the government wavered between blaming enemies of the state like the dead man himself saying, “we are sorry for the loss, but he reaped what he sowed,” and condemning the murder and risking alienating its most fanatical supporters.

Russia's radical conservatives are becoming more brazen. There are attempts to censor Pushkin and calls to ban Tolstoy from the school curriculum because he was excommunicated, cover up John the Baptist or St. Sebastian below the waist (the Pushkin Museum beware!). 

Paradoxically, attacking the Vadim Sidur exhibition in Moscow under religious slogans, the believers of today attacked an exhibition of religious art that had great meaning for their co-religionists just one or two generations ago.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when Christianity was persecuted in the Soviet Union, Sidur depicted Christian themes and scenes from the Gospels, such as "The Deposition from the Cross." Sidur's Christian contemporaries rejoiced in the fact that a modern artist was not turning out effigies of Lenin but was making modern Christian art.

Yet today's Orthodox Church reacted to the attack on Sidur in an extraordinary fashion. Vakhtang Kipshidze, spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchy, alleged -- entirely implausibly -- that Sidur's work was done on the orders of the Soviet government of the time. Another high-ranking Church official, Vsevolod Chaplin, condemned the attack but simultaneously said that Russian society had a problem with "the desecration of objects and symbols revered by the faithful." He then added, "Incidentally, it may have been no accident that some of these works were not allowed on public display during the Soviet era.”

Not only did a sculptor who could not be exhibited at the time because of his “pacifism”, “mysticism”, and religious imagery, incur the wrath of today's religious fundamentalists. Official Church spokesman of today referred back to Soviet-era practices when they discussed how Christian art should be treated.

An attack on an art exhibition is an attack on modernity, but the religious extremism on display both in Moscow and in the Middle East is, paradoxically, also an extreme form of modernism. Its perpetrators are not interested in antiquity but what can be termed "archaization," an artificial process of reconstructing the past anew to suit their image of the present.

It is not just extremists who feel this urge. Russians vaguely remember that President Barack Obama made a speech (it was last fall at the UN Generally Assembly), listing Russia as a global threat alongside ISIS. Many Russians joked that they were insulted to lose the "Most Terrible" status to the Ebola virus. We could not understand how Americans could think that we were worse than the sadists of ISIS. And yet we made it to the list of global threats for expressing sentiments similar to theirs -- something confirmed by the Manege attack.

Like many Muslims, many Russians are dissatisfied with their place in the modern world. It has not worked out for us in the present, so we seek sustenance in contradictory personalities and episodes from different historical periods. We both revere tsarist officers and take offense at the toppling of Lenin statues. We flaunt our religiosity and wax enthusiastic about the Soviet Union. Russian patriots feel good in the past, alongside Yury Gagarin, the Great Victory of 1945 and the empire stretching from Alaska to Warsaw -- and uncomfortable in the present.

Many of the world's Muslims harbor similar sentiments, harking back wistfully to the era of the Caliphate and feeling uneasy in the modern world. Religious fundamentalists, feeling insulted and threatened, conclude: “You ignored us and now you will shake in terror!” They try to compensate for their loss through destruction -- and end up killing their own culture and citizens. 

Unfortunately, the Russian state is playing the same game of artificial conservatism, of "It was better in the past than in the present." It tells people to accept the concepts of the Russian World (Russky Mir) or Novorossiya as something primordial, even though no one had even heard of them a year ago. Russians are told: accept what we concocted for you a year before and share this new identity, this cocktail of Orthodox Christianity, homophobia, hatred for the West, otherwise, you are bad Russians. It is as though the great tradition of Russian Europeans never existed, there were no Peter the Great, Pushkin, Kandinsky or celebrated Russian agnostics and atheists. 

The Russian authorities have cautiously condemned the pogrom at the Manege, but have not demonstrated that they are seriously committed to stopping it happen again. And we can understand why. As long as the state itself remains a force of archaism discontented with modernity, it will have a hard time stopping those who destroy statues or shred canvasses. The actions of the vandals, however extreme, reflect sentiments that are at the core of the current Russian ideology.

Lucian Freud, Woman with Eyes Closed, 2002

Picasso's Head of a Harlequin, 1971

Forensic experts have so far refused to say definitively whether or not the burnt remains were from stolen paintings.... The trial of Radu Dogaru and his five alleged accomplices -- one of whom is still on the run -- was opened and adjourned by the Romanian court until 10 September.... One of the lawyers said their clients had offered to return five of the paintings, with no mention of the remaining two. Another lawyer, Maria Varsii, said: It is more likely the paintings are intact. My client says they can be handed over to the Dutch authorities. In exchange, they want to go on trial in the Netherlands.... The Rotterdam paintings came to light some months [after the October 16 theft] later when Mariana Dragu, an art expert at Romania's National Art Museum, was asked by a friend to examine some artworks he was planning to buy. She said she called the prosecutor's office when she realised she was looking at the stolen originals. A few months later, three Romanian men were arrested on suspicion of involvement, including Radu Dogaru. It was following her son's arrest that Mrs. Dogaru allegedly burned the artworks at her home in the village of Carcaliu, in the Danube Delta region of eastern Romania.

Upon arrival at a crime scene, if investigators were to find nothing more than black ash, analyzing any of it would be impossible. “But fortunately, that’s never really the case,” Tague said. “If things are charred, then you can typically identify which artist would have generated the art.” 

It’s a delicate process. The eye can only see something as small as seventy-five microns, or about the width of a strand of hair. “You’re looking for particles much smaller than that,” Tague said. “So it’s tedious, really tedious. And you don’t want to disturb a crime scene. So it could take weeks or months just to recover the particles.” Even just two or three microns of dust could be the key to identifying the signature of Picasso.

Ms. Morais reported that the director of Romania's Natural History Museum, Ernest Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, 'told me by email that they also found "fragments of paintings with imprints of the canvas".'