Goodby to Jordan, Tuesday June 24, 2008

This evening I leave Jordan. I have spent the past four months as a research fellow at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, writing the final reports of my archaeological excavations at the site of Humayma in southern Jordan in the 1990s. My involvement in the project directed by John Oleson of the University of Victoria in British Columbia focused on the evidence for Christians in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods, the topic of my PhD dissertation. At the end of this post is a shorted version of my fellow's report blurb. The slightly longer version will be in the next ACOR Newsletter.

On Sunday and Monday I was in Petra as a guest of the archaeology department of King Hussein University at their newly established campus. I gave a lecture there about Christianity at Humayma, which was exceptionally well-received. After almost chickening out, I gave the presentation in Arabic, the first time that I have given a public presentation in Arabic since my teaching in Jerusalem in the late 1990s. I also had the opportunity to visit their new student training excavation at the Roman legionary fortress of Udhruh, near Petra.

In recent days I got involved in the controversy about the "oldest church in the world". A Jordanian archaeologist with overly-active fantasies got a lot of international press coverage by announcing recently his discovery of what he wants to be a cave church in use between 33 and 70 A.D. at a village site of Rihab, in northern Jordan. Some years ago he had excavated the church above the cave that has a Greek inscription that he wants to date to 230 A.D. I wrote a letter to the editor of the Jordan Times, indicating how highly unlikely (ridiculous is a less diplomatic way of putting it) the date of 230 A.D. is. Nobody takes his claims seriously. The church is a standard basilica from the 6th-7th centuries A.D., like the other known churches at the site.

I fly this evening to Germany, with Etihad Airlines, via Abu Dhabi. That way costs US$200 less than a direct flight from Amman to Frankfurt, while adding only eight hours to the flight time. I will spend the bulk of July back in Bamberg, where I was in 2007. Then in August I will take part in an excavation in Saudi Arabia. I got the news yesterday that the Saudis have awarded our visas, so everything looks set now for that new adventure.

ACOR Fellow's Report: Christianity in Humayma, Jordan

I had spent a lot of effort on the C101 "Lower Church", the best preserved of the five known churches at the site. It was a standard basilica constructed in the 5th-6th centuries A.D. with three apses at the east end. Several crosses carved into flagstone pavers in the nave and side aisles marked burials of two men, two women and a young girl; one of the burials inside a wooden coffin even had its desiccated brain still preserved. There was a single entrance to the church on the north side, while a row of rooms along the south side of the church were used for domestic occupation. Enough of the marble furnishings survived to show that the church had the standard set of chancel screen panels, a pulpit, an altar and a basin for holy water.

The excavation of the C101 church proved to be exceptionally informative for understanding how the building went out of use. The altar, pulpit, chancel screens and other marble liturgical furnishings were broken up and most of the fragments were removed from the church, at a time when the building remained structurally intact. Only later did the walls collapse and the roof burn down, leaving a thick layer of ash. A cluster of intact pottery vessels from the mid-7th century in one of the south rooms provide the best evidence for dating the last phase of occupation of the church, while a bread oven in the northeast sacristy room points to non-church occupation of that room in the Umayyad period.

Humayma's principal claim to historical fame came in the early eighth century when the members of the Abbasid family lived there as they organized their ultimately successful revolution against the Umayyad caliphate in 749-750 AD; the first two Abbasid caliphs were born here in the early 8th century. So it is especially interesting to determine what the Christian presence at the site was at the time. The C101 church seems to have gone out of use by the mid-7th century, well before the Abbasids arrived, while two other churches were completely built over by domestic houses in early 8th century.