Palmyra is the only Near Eastern city that produced thousands of funerary portraits in a period of almost 400 years. The scale of the production and use of these artworks is without analogy to any ancient city. Even the Fayum oasis in Egypt, famous for its painted mummy portraits dated to the Roman period (the same time as Palmyrene portraits), has not provided such a large number of pieces of funerary art as Palmyra. It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to state that Palmyrene funerary portraits are unique in terms of scale. The ‘Palmyrene Portrait Project’ (PPP) led by R. Raja at the University of Aarhus aims to reassemble and study all the portraits from Palmyra. A part of this ambitious and large venture constitutes the volume under review on the representations of women in Palmyrene funerary art. Based on K.'s Ph.D. dissertation, the book is a large study of female portraiture in the Syrian city in Roman times (first century bce to third century ce). The goal of this immense work is to investigate the expression of female identity through funerary portrayal.

The book is presented in a colourful and pleasant way. Readers will find maps, diagrams, pictures of funerary sculpture and tables. The visual reception of the volume is very appealing. The main value of the monograph is the catalogue of representations of women in funerary and religious contexts. K. has reassembled an impressive number of 905 portraits, of which the last 20 (nos 885–905) concern honorific (‘civic’) and religious contexts. It is regrettable that many pictures of these reliefs and sculptures are not included, such as no. 145, which K. interprets as a possible representation of a priestess, which would be a breakthrough in studies on Palmyra. The catalogue is ordered chronologically, and the objects are classified by the new categorisation proposed by K. The portraits show considerable diversity, most of them remain undated and uninscribed; hence the issue of grouping them chronologically based only on the iconographic elements can be tricky. Some motifs, like the presence or absence of spindle and distaff, can appear across the proposed categories.

K. concentrates largely on detailed descriptions of elements such as clothing, jewellery, attributes, headgear and posture of the depicted women. The descriptions take up a large part of the volume. She tries to contextualise Palmyrene depictions of women, setting them in comparison with the rest of the Roman Empire, looking at evidence from Zeugma, Hatra, Dura Europos, and also beyond the Roman sphere: Gandhara (pp. 97–100). Unfortunately, these comparisons are only made explicit for jewellery and not for other aspects.

Concerning gestures depicted on the Palmyrene funerary reliefs, K. interprets the raising hands as a female gesture connected to participation in religious activities (pp. 40–1). Nevertheless, this is a simple sign of greeting or adoration, and it occurs irrespective of gender. It relates both to the funerary and religious sphere and to the honorific one, as attested in Hatra (A. Kubiak-Schneider, Des dédicaces sans théonyme de Palmyre. Béni (soit) son nom pour l’éternité [2021], pp. 101–10).

It is right to state that the men are much more visible in the religious inscriptions from Palmyra as well as those from other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. Women are present too, but on a smaller scale. This distribution does not differ in relation to Palmyrene religious epigraphy. The increased visibility of women in the epigraphic sources relating to the religious sphere in the second and third centuries ce is more connected to the economic boom and to the intensification of ‘epigraphic culture’ in this period in the entire region than to social changes of the role of women in Palmyrene society (see Kubiak-Schneider, ‘Women in the Votive Dedications from Palmyra’, Archimède. Archéologie et Histoire Ancienne 8 [2021], 55–65 and Des dédicaces sans théonyme de Palmyre. Béni (soit) son nom pour l’éternité [2021], pp. 69–71).

The material studied by K. is immense, and it would be difficult to analyse all the details and aspects of female portraiture. The volume, even with its deficiencies, is a basis for further research, not only on funerary art and the place of women in ancient societies. It constitutes a great overview of the question of female images in the Roman East for all who want to quench their curiosity and have a good background in Classics (as many terms borrowed from the Greek and Roman traditions are, regrettably, left without further explanation).