Who was this antiquarian, or archaeologist avant la lettre? Born in 1717 in County Meath, Ireland, the impoverished son of an Anglican clergyman, Wood was educated at Glasgow University and read law at the Middle Temple before becoming a “travelling tutor and an excellent classic scholar” (in the words of his friend Horace Walpole). Already well travelled in Europe and the Middle East, in 1749 he embarked with two wealthy young companions, John Bouverie and James Dawkins, on an expedition to Greece via Rome. Their purpose was, as Wood put it, “to read the Iliad and Odyssey in the countries where Achilles fought, where Ulysses travelled, and where Homer sung”. Borra was engaged as “architect and draughtsman”. Bouverie died during the two years of the party’s travels around the Levant, but in March 1751 Wood, Dawkins and Borra arrived in Palmyra. They remained for two weeks, making notes and copying inscriptions, while Borra amassed numerous sketches in pen, ink and wash. Then the expedition moved on to Baalbek, where they did the same, before returning home.

Two years later The Ruins of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmor in the desart [sic] appeared in London. The most impressive study of an ancient city that had been published hitherto, it included 57 folio plates plus explanatory notes, seven pages of inscriptions, a dissertation on ancient Palmyra and a journal of the expedition. Some of the plates extend over several pages and are so beautiful that copies of the first edition with the illustrations intact are today extremely rare. But what made Borra’s drawings so important was their photographic precision. Unlike his more famous contemporary Piranesi, whose depictions of ruins are primarily intended to be picturesque, under Wood’s tutelage Borra devoted himself solely to archaeological accuracy. They thus provided perfect templates for architects and designers to adopt.

Critical opinion throughout the republic of letters was unanimous in praise of Wood, and a French edition followed immediately. Four years later, a second, similar volume followed: The Ruins of Balbec, otherwise Heliopolis in Coelosyria, again to general acclaim. Only two decades later, after both Dawkins and Wood had died, would Gibbon sound a discordant note when he appended a sour footnote to chapter 17 of his Decline and Fall, claiming that Wood had “disappointed the expectation of the public as a critic and still more as a traveller”. Later in his History, however, Gibbon admitted his debt to Wood, acknowledging “the magnificent descriptions and drawings of Dawkins and Wood, who have transported into England the ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec”.

The story of the reception of Wood’s scholarship and Borra’s images deserves a book in its own right. Almost immediately, imitations of Palmyrene colonnades, capitals, reliefs and other architectural features became ubiquitous in neoclassical architecture and design, especially in Britain and the American colonies. One of Wood’s friends was the architect Robert Adam, who incorporated motifs from Palmyra into such great country houses as Syon, Osterley, Kenwood and Harewood. In the newly independent United States, there are ubiquitous echoes of Palmyra, most prominently where Jefferson copied the Temple of the Sun for the east portico of the Capitol in Washington. Even the eagle used in the Great Seal is also borrowed from a soffit in the same temple. Indeed, the debt is so extensive that a major Anglo-American exhibition is overdue. It is time that the great museums and libraries of London, New York and Washington joined forces to highlight what has been lost in the destruction of Palmyra.