Palmyra was first attested in the early second millennium BC, as a caravan stop for travelers crossing the Syrian Desert. The city is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and in the annals of the assyrian kings. The Duc de Luynes's 1864 expedition to the Dead Sea included Vignes, geologist Louis Lartet, naturalist Dr. Combe, and the duke himself, who accompanied the expedition as far as Petra. Louis Vignes was a French naval officer who, had been trained as a photographer by Charles Negre prior to their departure. Vignes's photographs were reproduced as photogravures by Charles Nègre in the duke's account of the expedition published in 1875.
