Revision of the role of tesserae and their connection to banquets in Palmyrene temples.

This paper deals with the issue of the Palmyrene tesserae and their attribution to the cultic banquets. It focuses on the epigraphic, iconographic as well as on the archaeological evidence to demonstrate a new approach concerning the objects seeing them as an administrative and legal tool. Furthermore, treated are the priests and their role of symposiarchos, distribution and share of food and the archaeological context of discovering the small clay objects in the territory of this Syrian city of the Roman times (1st century BCE – 3rd century CE).

Palmyra; banquets; temples; Near East; Syria; administration.