AATAW is thrilled to present Kimiko Adler’s video lecture, “Tracing Roman-Palmyrene Identity in the 2nd Century CE: Male Agrippa and the Temple of Baalshamin.”
Kimiko Adler is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Classics at NYU. She received her BA in Classical Studies and Government from Claremont McKenna College in 2023, writing her thesis on Roman literary representations of Jews and cult of Isis devotees during the imperial period. Her research centers on the archaeology of the Roman Eastern Mediterranean, analyzing the layered cultural histories of religious spaces in Roman Egypt, Judaea, and Syria. She has previously interned at the American Academy of Rome (2021) and the Getty Villa (2021) and has excavated at Morgantina (2023) and Gabii (2022).
Kimiko has provided us with the following abstract:
“In the second century CE Palmyra, Male Agrippa, a local elite, sponsored extensive renovations at the sanctuary of Baalshamin, which included the addition of a Roman-style temple, and he was subsequently celebrated in a bilingual (Greek-Palmyrene and Aramaic) inscription for his contributions. That renovation included the addition of Roman and Hellenistic elements to the Syrian-style shrine that had dated back to before Roman control of the city. Understood together, the temple and its inscription express a multi-layered cultural identity for Male Agrippa, and by extension, for Roman-Palmyrenes. The Temple of Baalshamin, and specifically the inscription commemorating Male Agrippa, is a case study for understanding cultural change and continuity in Palmyra.”
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