Amman and Aqaba March 31-April 12

On the afternoon of March 31, I moved out of ACOR because the building was going to fill up beyond capacity the next day with a large group of graduate students from Belgium for a couple-week study program. I went to stay with Isabelle Rubin, an old friend and fellow participant in a number of excavation projects over the years, including my short season at Humayma in the summer of 2009.

Most days I went to ACOR to work in the library. I wound up work on the Madaba Archaeological Park, putting the records back in storage until I return in the fall. One day I met Ghazi Bisheh, the excavator of the Madaba Archaeological Park in 1992-1993, to look at his slides of the excavation, which he only recently mentioned that he had.

I also helped proofread Dino Politis’s report of his Deir ‘Ayn ‘Abata (Lot’s Cave) excavation report; Isabelle has been doing the page layout. I also finished my revisions of Gustaf Dalman’s first volume of Palestinian Customs. I also mostly finished up my entries for the Metropolitan Museum exhibit. Unfortunately, my permission to look at some of the objects did not come through, so that loose end will have to wait until I return in August.

I also did some work on my Humayma reports. I needed to check a few details for some pieces of marble from the excavations in storage in the Department of Antiquities office in Aqaba, so on April 9 I took an evening bus to Aqaba, arriving in a most unusual heavy rainstorm. The next day, April 10, I spent a couple of hours working in the museum in Aqaba. Unfortunately the person in charge of the storerooms was on vacation that week, so I could not see all of the marble pieces I needed to check, but my tight schedule did not permit me to go to Aqaba any other time. Finishing up that task will also have to wait until I return to Jordan in August.

One of the marble pieces from my excavations at Humayma

That afternoon I walked around and saw the archaeological sites in Aqaba once again, including the possible earliest known church building. The excavator, Tom Parker, has asked me to write a chapter about the identification of the building as a church.

The possible earliest known church in Aqaba

The next morning, April 11, I took a bus to Ghor al-Safi, to met Dino Politis at the Lot’s Cave museum, which he has been spending years getting set up. The museum is close to opening; it will be officially called the Museum at the Lowest Place on Earth. Also at the museum that day was Yiannis Meimaris, who was looking at some of the Greek tombstone inscriptions from Dino’s excavations that he has been publishing.

Yiannis Meimaris in the Lot’s Cave museum storeroom

That afternoon I returned to Amman and stayed once again at Isabelle’s place.

 The next day, April 12, was a major event at the new National Museum in Amman, sponsored by the Department of Antiquities to formally launch their Mega Jordan data base of archaeological sites. The database is better than anything else anywhere in the world, so Jordan is a world-leader in this field.

That day was the end of my current stay in Jordan, and that evening I went to the airport for my flight. I had overstayed my three-month tourist visa by a couple of weeks, but paying the fine at the airport was an easy solution to the problem.