We are in the heart of Copenhagen, Denmark, at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek – a beautiful, and architecturally eclectic building full of art and archaeology. It is also here that you will find the archive of the Danish archaeologist Harald Ingholt (1896-1985). It is kept on rolling shelves in the library storage at the museum. Several metres of blue file holders with Ingholt’s notes, records, and photographs await, once the correct shelf has been located and rolled into position (for your own safety, be sure to fasten the shelf before entering the narrow aisle).
Unboxing the thousands of archive sheets contained in the files leaves us with a magnificent dossier of legacy data about sculpture and architecture from the ancient desert city of Palmyra, in Syria. The files were created by Ingholt throughout his career. His connection to the site can be traced back to the 1920s and 1930s, when he conducted fieldwork in Palmyra, cementing his interest in its sculpture. Ingholt realised that, if he analysed the Palmyrene sculptures stylistically, it would be possible to determine a chronology for their development. He duly wrote his higher doctoral dissertation on this subject (published in Danish in 1928), and kept gathering information on the sculptures and the monuments they came from long after he moved on to other research areas.
Unknown, damaged, and lost artefacts
Palmyra flourished during the first three centuries AD, until it was sacked by the Roman army. Its fame, though, endured and has successfully captured both public imagination and academic interest in modern times (see CWA 111 and 114). Since 2011, the civil war in Syria has brought human tragedy and devastation to the site, with archaeological objects also damaged or lost, and it has become near impossible to conduct fieldwork there.
