Tadmor

Tadmor appears once in Scripture as one of Solomon's great building projects: "And he built Tadmor in the wilderness, and all the store cities, which he built in Hamath" (2 Chronicles 8:4; parallel 1 Kings 9:18 reads "Tamar in the wilderness"). The site is the famous oasis city the Greeks called Palmyra — an isolated water source in the Syrian desert about a hundred and twenty miles northeast of Damascus that controlled the trade route between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. Solomon's wilderness fortress secured his empire's eastern frontier — a strategic vision realized centuries later when the Romans turned Palmyra into one of the wealthiest cities in the ancient world.