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GRADE 10 Reading Comprehensión
GRADE 10 Reading Comprehensión
GRADE 10 Reading Comprehensión
Palmyra
The Syrian desert is a rugged, hostile expanse of sharp rock, thorns, and scrub grass. There,
baked by a merciless sun and chilled beneath the gaze of a poetry-inspiring moon, lies an oasis,
Palmyra. She stirs her feet in fine clouds of dust that hand wistfully in the wake of eddying gusts
or the passage of herded flocks. She is the bride of the desert.
The bus from the Syrian capital, Damascus, takes roughly four hours to grind eastward through
arid landscape to Palmyra. It is still a relatively short journey, considering that camel caravans,
which still make the trek today, count time in plodding days rather than mechanical minutes.
Palmyra is an essential halfway-house for desert travellers. Here subterranean veins of water
rise to bless the land with life: fertile pastures, drinking holes for fauna and groves of palm trees
(from which the town takes its name) which offer shade. For countless centuries, from ancient
Greece to the present day, Palmyra’s liquid asset, combined with her strategic location in the
centre of the Middle East, has made it a critical staging post for trading routes between Persia,
Africa and Europe. The civilization all this trading activity brought with it made Palmyra, if only
briefly, the envy of nations.
Records of settled human habitation at Palmyra begin at around 1000 BC when the oasis was
established as an Assyrian caravan town of some size. Two hundred years of laid-back Greek
rule followed, leaving as its most enduring inheritance, the Acropolis-style Bel Temple. It was
not until 106 AD, however, when annexed by the Roman Empire, that Palmyra’s commercial
potential was optimized. For more than two centuries, Palmyra flourished as a cosmopolitan
trading and transit centre of phenomenal wealth. Many of the town’s most exquisite remains,
like its almost perfectly preserved amphitheatre, were constructed during this period.
But of all the historical figures to leave an imprint in the sands of Palmyra, it was a woman – the
fiery half Greek, half Arabian Queen Zenobia – who left the most enduring mark. During the
latter half of Rome’s rule, Zenobia’s husband, Odenathus, was ruler of the oasis. In 266 AD
Odenathus died in suspicious circumstances, some say perhaps even on the orders of Zenobia
herself. Claiming to be a descendant of Cleopatra, the resourceful and ambitious Amazon took
control of the city. Her short but turbulent reign saw both the best of times and the worst of
times for the oasis.
Under Zenobia’s influence Palmyra entered a Golden Age of riches and fame. The great temples
were filled with gold, ornamental and adoring statues; huge civic monuments and grand
avenues of marble columns were constructed. The city took on an impressive form, the
greatness of which can still easily be imagined on viewing the ruins today. However, Zenobia
allowed her mind to be filled with expansionist ambitions, perhaps forgetting in her excitement,
the humble trading business her civilization was founded on. Encouraged by news of a
distracted and weakened Rome in 271 AD, Zenobia gathered her forces and headed west,
beginning an ill-fated military campaign against the still mighty empire.
Zenobia’s troops were no match for the battle-hardened legions of the Roman Emperor
Aurelian who took two years to reach Palmyra. He then put the city to the torch and its
inhabitants to death. The oasis thus fell into a lengthy period of decline. Muslims took it over in
634 AD and it remained in a state of relative peace and obscurity until a massive earthquake in
1089 practically levelled it.
From paragraph 2
1. What does the word ‘grind’ tell you about the journey from Damascus?
From paragraph 3
4. Explain in your own words ‘to leave an imprint in the sands of Palmyra’.
From paragraph 6
From paragraph 7