Temple of Bel, Palmyra, LiDAR Derivatives, Syria
| General Attributes |
DOI| 10.34946/D6CP4M | |
| Project Name | Temple of Bel, Palmyra, LiDAR Derivatives |
| Country | Syria |
| Status | Upcoming |
| Download |
| Spatial Data | Coming Soon |
| Data Type |
Size |
Device Name |
Device Type |
| LiDAR - Terrestrial | 3 GB | Not available | Not available |
| Background |
| Site Description | Built in the first century CE and dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Bel, the temple dominated Palmyra's sacred precinct with its massive stone walls and towering columns. The sanctuary featured a remarkable fusion of Greco-Roman and Oriental styles, with an ornate entrance portico, elaborately carved ceilings, and relief sculptures depicting religious processions. The inner cella housed shrines to Bel and associated deities, while the surrounding courtyard provided space for ritual ceremonies. For nearly two millennia, this architectural masterpiece survived as a testament to Palmyra's cultural significance along ancient trade routes. Tragically, ISIS militants destroyed the temple in August 2015, reducing centuries of irreplaceable heritage to rubble. Today, only fragments and documentation remain of this extraordinary monument that once symbolized religious tolerance and artistic achievement in the Syrian desert. | |
| Project Description | Captured with an unknown laser scanner in 2010 by the Archaeological Institute of Kashihara, Nara's Archaeological Mission to Palmyra. This dataset is lacking critical metadata and is made available only as a data derivative. Though 29 LiDAR scans are separated, they are lacking the centerpoints and associated images. Some contain point normals, some do not. some contain intensity values, some do not. Only 2 scans were taken at a high resolution, beneath the ornate main portico of the temple. A complete merged model is provided,apparently generated using mesh-based workflows in Geomagic software.
Though lacking critical metadata, this model still represents perhaps the most metrologically sound representation of the site, now lying in ruins. | |
| UNESCO World Heritage Site | Site of Palmyra |
| Collection Date | 2010-01-01 to 2010-01-01 |
| Publication Date | 2026-01-13 |
| License Type | CC BY-NC |
| Model Information |
| Reuse Score | B - High-Quality Model without Georeferencing |
| Curator Notes | This dataset is lacking critical metadata. -Scott McAvoy OH3D |
| Entities |
| Contributors | Kiyohide Saito, Archaeological Institute of Kashihara, Nara, Directorate of Antiquities and Museums of Palmyra |
| Citation |
| Kiyohide Saito, Archaeological Institute of Kashihara, Nara, Directorate of Antiquities and Museums of Palmyra 2026: Temple of Bel, Palmyra, LiDAR Derivatives - LiDAR - Terrestrial. Distributed by Open Heritage 3D. https://doi.org/10.34946/D6CP4M |
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