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PHOTO BY MARKA/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

SITTING IN THE DESERT OASIS some 125 miles northeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus, Palmyra’s impressive ruins attest to the wealth of a once bustling city, whose inhabitants spoke a dialect of Aramaic. Most of the standing structures date to the Roman period, when Palmyra reached the apex of its prosperity. Historical references in P. Amherst 63 indicate that the ancestors of the Jewish community on Elephantine had fled from Samaria to Palmyra in the seventh century B.C.E.