Family Banqueting at Palmyra. Reassessing the Evidence

Banqueting at Palmyra had a two-fold dimension: that of communal religious banquets, in Aramaic marzeaḥ, celebrated in rooms generally annexed to temples by a wide number of guests. More restricted and intimate in scope, family banquets were held in private residences. The paper reassesses the representations of élite family banquets, focusing on the meaning of the extant scenes found in the funerary context, on the basis of Palmyrene and contemporary visual documents from Dura Europos and Edessa.