Zenobia

Hailing from the Syrian city of Palmyra a woman named Zenobia (also Bathzabbai) governed territory in the eastern Roman empire from 268 to 272. She thus became the most famous Palmyrene who ever lived. But sources for her life and career are scarce. This book situates Zenobia in the social <br>economic cultural and material context of her Palmyra. By doing so it aims to shed greater light on the experiences of Zenobia and Palmyrene women like her at various stages of their lives. Not limiting itself to the political aspects of her governance it contemplates what inscriptions and<br>material culture at Palmyra enable us to know about women and the practice of gender there and thus the world that Zenobia navigated. It reflects on her clothes house hygiene property owning gestures religious practices funerary practices education languages social identities marriage <br>and experiences motherhood along with her meteoric rise to prominence and civil war. It also ponders Zenobia's legacy in light of the contemporary human tragedy in Syria.