Amman September 1-October 13

I spent September and the first half of October at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman. My principal project was to work on the final report of the excavations in the Madaba Archaeological Park from the early 1990s. I also worked further to edit the English version of Mohammad Ghosheh’s book about Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. I also agreed to translate the next of the eight volumes about Palestinian customs by Gustaf Dalman, although I will not do the bulk of the translation work for the next volume until early 2014.

On Saturday and Sunday September 8-9 I attended a conference at the University of Jordan on Burial Customs in Bilad al-Sham in the Roman to Islamic Periods. I spoke on Sunday about burials in early Christian churches, focused on my excavation in 1989 of a tomb from the early Abbasid period in the lower church at al-Quwaysmah, on the south side of Amman.

On the evening of September 8, I attended a dinner for the conference participants and after the conference session on Sunday afternoon September 9, I joined the excursion for the conference participants to visit tombs in the Amman area. We stopped first at the Roman mausoleum at Nuwayjis on the north side of Amman.

 

The conference participants at the Roman mausoleum at Nuwayjis

After a stop at the Iron Age site of Mabraq, we arrived at the Roman-period Sleepers’ Cave on the south side of Amman, which by local tradition is the cave of the Quranic story of the People of the Cave, known to Christian tradition as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. The main cave is now an Islamic site, and the women members of the group had to put on long garments.

One of the women entering the Cave of the Sleepers

To the west of the main Cave of the Sleepers is a row of Roman rock-cut tombs.

 

The main Roman rock-cut tomb to the west

Those tombs are enclosed by a fence, and when the custodians would not let us in, we simply climbed through a gap in the fence.

 

The group jumping the fence

The following day, Monday September 10, Christoph Eger and Beatrice Huber, two of the conference participants, and I went with a hired car and driver on a day trip to Irbid, Umm Qays and Pella in northern Jordan. Our first stop was the Darat al-Saray Museum in Irbid, which I had not been to since it opened a few years ago. The archaeology museum is housed in a renovated late Ottoman building.

The inner courtyard of the Darat al-Saray Museum

The mosaics gallery of the Darat al-Saray Museum

We then went to the major Roman-Byzantine city site of Umm Qays and walked around the extensive ruins.

The three of us at the Roman theater at Umm Qays

We were not able to get into the big underground mausoleum there, so Christoph tried taking photographs of the interior by lowering his camera through a light shaft.

Christoph taking a photograph

After touring the site, we had lunch at the restaurant, with its wonderful view.

 

The three of us at the Umm Qays restaurant

The last stop of the day was the major Roman-Byzantine city site of Pella in the Jordan Valley. We walked around the extensive ruins.

The site of Pella from the rest house

The schedule of public events and evening lectures also picked up once again. In addition to the usual round of archaeology lectures, on October 4 I went with some friends to the Rainbow Theater during a European Film Festival to see the recent Austrian documentary “What Happiness Is” about Bhutan and the country’s Gross National Happiness survey. The next morning I took two people passing through ACOR to visit the National Museum downtown; this was the first time I had been to the museum since it partially opened some months ago. On October 6 I gave a talk about Early Islamic Jordan for the participants in an archaeology tour of Jordan that ACOR was hosting.

I also made arrangements to travel to the United States to attend a memorial gathering of relatives in Louisville, Kentucky on October 20 for an elderly aunt of mine who had died in early September. Because of the extended Id al-Adha holiday starting on Monday October 14 marking the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, I decided to leave on my trip early and go to Rome for a few days first. And so early on the morning of Monday October 14 I flew to Rome.