5 February (Sat.) - 27 February (Sun.), 2022 【Close-up Exhibition】 Hope from Ruins - The Revived Palmyrene Sculptures

　　Palmyra, an ancient caravan city, was located in the middle of the Syrian Desert. The city, which flourished due to East-West trade on the Silk Road, and was destroyed by the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, and , is a designated as UNESCO World Heritage Site.
　Tragically, in 2015, during the Syrian civil war, ISIS demolished the remains of the ancient temples and the funerary sculptures held at the Palmyra Museum that had been excavated from the site. After the liberation of Palmyra from ISIS in March 2016, the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums evacuated the vandalized exhibits to the Damascus National Museum, together with members of the University of Warsaw, Poland.
　Since 2017, the Archaeological Institute of Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, has been commissioned by the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) to provide various training programs for at human resources development project to pass on Syrian cultural heritage to the future. The vandalized funerary sculptures from the Palmyra Museum were used as teaching materials in, training courses on the restoration of stone sculptures in 2019 and 2020.
　In this exhibition, videos and panels, introduce the contents and progress of the restoration of the Palmyrene funeral sculptures, as well as Japan’s contribution to other training programs for cultural heritage personnel.