The inhabitants of Palmyra, an ancient Syrian caravan city at the crossroads between the Roman and the Parthian empires, embellished their tombs with distinctive funerary portraits between the first and third centuries AD.

These vivid likenesses of finely dressed men, women and children, often accompanied by inscriptions naming local families, illuminate cultural exchanges taking place in the eastern Mediterranean.

This installation presents sculpture from the collections of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen and Stanford University on long-term loan to the Getty alongside historical engravings and photographs from the Getty Research Institute.