Apamea is known in Syria as Afamia, أفاميا. It lies near a main road leading North from Hama on to Aleppo. The citadel you pass on your way there is named Qal’at Al-Mudiq, you will see the citadel on some of my pictures. The classical site is huge, in a guide I read it is the largest in Syria. It once had a circumference of 16 kilometers, with 100 towers. It is obvious that only the central part of the old city has been excavated, but that includes a partly restored colonnaded street which is most impressive. For much of the walk you tread the ancient Roman road, with on either hand lots of still standing (or re-erected) columns. Many of the finds during the excavations, that were started by Belgian excavators in 1930, were in a Brussels’ museum when that was bombed during WW II, which led to the loss of most of them. This is a curious parallel to more ancient finds, copies of which are in the Aleppo museum, that were transferred to Berlin and then bombed out of existence also.

The town dates back to the Bronze Age, reached a peak under Seleucus Nicador, born 358/354 BC, Europus, Macedonia, died August/September 281, near Lysimachia, Thrace. He was a Macedonian army officer, founder of the Seleucid kingdom. In the struggles following the death of Alexander the Great, he rose from governor of Babylon to king of an empire centring on Syria and Iran (from the Enc. Britt.). He named the town after his wife from Bactria. Note the Bradt Guide on Syria mentions 3000 BC as a founding date, which is wrong. It does mention the town was famous for the taming of elephants, a skill brought from India. When peace broke out in 162 BC (during some war, I don’t much care) they were all slaughtered. The city once held 500.000 inhabitants, though 380.000 were thought to be slaves.

I show mainly pictures of the long, long but not a moment boring walk along the colonnaded road, with some side visits to bath houses and temples (which I will identify later as a I add captions). Some pictures at the beginning and end of the series show what I saw getting there and away.