Perhaps the thing that has made Palmyra best known in the west is death. Like the ancient Egyptians, the Palmyrenes are famous for their tombs. Where they differ from the pyramids (other than in scale) is that here the tower tombs are monuments to the grandeur not of an individual, but of a family. The larger towers contain up to six storeys, each lined with slots (loculi) for bodies. A single tower could thus accomodate up to 400 members of a single extended family dynasty. Closing the mouth of the loculus would be a stone slab carved with a portrait of the occupant - many of these funerary portraits can be found in museums in Syria and accross the world (the British Museum has about a dozen on display) and they provide a startlingly direct image of daily life at the eastern fringe of the Roman empire.