We call on the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and Roger Michel, executive director of the Institute for Digital Archaeology, to abandon immediately the scheme to reconstruct the Arch of Palmyra in Trafalgar Square on April 19.
In 2015 the pictures of destruction by ISIS/Daesh of the Temple of Bel (also known as Baal Shamin) in Palmyra rightly shocked the world, and attempts to safeguard the world’s historical heritage from future acts of senseless aggression are to be applauded. However, the reconstruction of the temple arch in Trafalgar Square on April 19 by the Oxford based Institute of Digital Archaeology (IDS) will serve a much darker purpose.
Roger Michel, the IDA’s executive director, told The Times: “It is really a political statement, a call to action, to draw attention to what is happening in Syria and Iraq … The symbolic value of these sites is enormous.” At first glance, the sentiment appears unimpeachable. But a problem arises in considering the exact nature of the symbol being celebrated. From earliest times Baal was a powerful symbol for evil and the occult: a pagan Canaanite god who demanded regular and bloody appeasement by child sacrifice. Baal worship, representing all that was evil, was particularly condemned in the Bible (e.g. Leviticus 18:21).
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