Hyderabad November 6-8

My flight arrived in Hyderabad at 7:45 am on Wednesday November 6, and I went into the Abids area in the city center and checked into the Sai Prakash hotel, where I have stayed a number of times before.

Later that morning I went to the nearby Andhra Pradesh State Department of Archaeology to make a courtesy call on the chief archaeologists there and talk about my project in Bhimunipatnam and the Visakhapatnam District. Meeting them was the one crucial thing I needed to do in Hyderabad.

I showed them a copy of the draft reports of my 2011 and 2013 projects and they immediately noticed that I had made a major mistake by identifying my project as a Survey of Heritage Buildings in Bhimunipatnam. That needed to be “documentation” not ‘survey” because that is what my permit from the Andhra Pradesh State Department of Archaeology stated. It seems that there is a crucial distinction between “documentation” projects, which the state departments of archaeology can issue permits for and “survey” projects, which only the central government Archaeological Survey of India can issue permits for.

Later that afternoon I went to Shivarampally in the far south side of the city to meet Shobha, a friend and former colleague at the Henry Martyn Institute, only to have another comical episode of missing each other. When I arrived at her flat at the arranged time she happened to be chatting with a neighbor one floor down and with dysfunctional cell phones, it took us an hour and a half to get together. This episode again highlights the perils of my trying to meet people within hours of my arrival in India, before I have settled in and have a functioning cell phone.

In any event, the rest of the evening passed pleasantly. I left at 10:00, by which time buses have stopped running so it took about an hour and a half to get back to my hotel via seven-seater auto and walking.

The next day, Thursday November 7, in the morning I had a long session at an internet outlet and did some shopping. Later that afternoon, I went once again to Shivarampally to meet Varghese, another friend, former student and colleague at the Henry Martyn Institute, and attend a small function for the second anniversary of his founding his Daya Center for Peace. I then stayed on for dinner with Varghese, his wife Reeba and some others from the Center.

 

Varghese speaking about the Daya Center for Peace at the function

The third day, Friday November 8, I went once again to Shivarampally in the morning to visit the people at the Henry Martyn Institute, where I had taught between 2000 and 2006. Given that on each of the three days I was in Hyderabad I ended up traveling the long distance from the city center to Shivarampally in the far south side of the city, I would have been better off arranging to stay in the Henry Martyn Institute hostel.

 

The campus of the Henry Martyn Institute

In the afternoon I returned to the city center and did some shopping and got things arranged for my early morning flight to Ahmedabad. In recent days I had been reading Nirad Chaudhuri’s Autobiography of an Unknown Indian.

Amman October 30-November 5

After my trip to the USA, I was back in Amman for only a few days before leaving for India. I stayed once again at the American Center of Oriental Research. I did a bit of further work on the Madaba Archaeological Park report and translated another section of Volume 2 of Gustaf Dalman’s Work and Customs in Palestine.

The evening of Wednesday October 30 there was a public lecture at ACOR by Győző Vörös about his work at the site of Machaeus, one of Herod the Great’s palaces. The first final report volume of his project at Machaeus has just been published and I wanted to meet him to discuss the option of my helping to edit the second volume, which we agreed that I will do in February.

On Tuesday November 5 I left on my trip to India. I noticed the demolition of the old terminal in progress at the Amman airport.

 

The demolition of the old airport terminal

I took a 2:00 pm flight to Jeddah, which arrived at 4:15. I then had to hang out for the next seven hours in the very small and overcrowed international transit area until my onward flight to Hyderabad left at 12:30 am on the 6th. The transit area was sort of okay at first, but it soon filled up to beyond capacity. There were substantially more passengers, mostly Muslim pilgrims, than the available seats. I have been in the domestic transit area of the Jeddah airport a couple of times, which was not so bad, but this overcrowded international transit area beats the international departures check-in area of the Riyadh airport as the worst airport I have ever been in.

The overcrowded international transit area in the Jeddah airport

Dubuque and Coralville October 24-29

On October 24 I got up early in the morning to catch the 8:30 bus from Rockford to Dubuque, which arrived at 11:00, in time for lunch with my parents at the Luther Manor retirement home.

I was in Dubuque for only three days on this short trip, having been in Dubuque on a longer visit in July. I stayed in my parents’ apartment at Luther Manor and I had the use of my brother John’s car, so I could do a lot of shopping and go to the Wartburg Seminary library a couple of times. John and his wife Renee came by one evening with pizza.

 

The literate Schick family

On Sunday October 27 John and Renee picked me up and we went to Coralville, an hour and a half drive away. We arrived at the condominium where my sister Linda lives and went with her and her friend Dennis to church for a Reformation Sunday service. After the service we all went to a restaurant for brunch and then we attended a performance of the Monty Python musical Spamalot at the Coralville Theater. Afterwards I checked into a hotel near where my sister lives and later that evening we all went out to dinner.

 

The group in Coralville (from left: Renee, John, me, Linda and Dennis)

On Monday October 28, we all met again for breakfast and then Dennis took me to the bus station where I took a Megabus into Chicago. This was the first time I had taken a trip with the Megabus company. The bus arrived in Chicago at 3:00, with enough time to get to the O’Hare airport for my flight to Detroit at 6:30. From Detroit I took an overnight flight to Paris, and then an afternoon flight on the 29th to Amman, arriving back at the American Center of Oriental Research at 10:45 pm.

Chicago and Louisville October 18-22

On Friday morning October 18 I flew from Rome to Chicago. As soon as the plane touched down in Chicago, my cell phone received the SMS messages that Ivana had sent me the previous day in Rome, along with messages from my Jordanian cell phone company welcoming me to Rome – the delay being an artifact of incompatible technology.

I stayed Friday night in Hyde Park with Fred Donner, my former PhD thesis advisor, and had dinner that evening with my friend and colleague Iman Saca and got caught up with her news.

On Saturday October 19 I spent the day at the University of Chicago. I put in a few hours of work in the Oriental Institute Archives library and picked up at the Seminary Coop Bookstore a copy of Nirad Chaudhuri’s famous Autobiography of an Unknown Indian; I will be meeting his son Prithvi during my trip to India in November. That evening Fred Donner gave me the lowdown about an early Arabic papyrus document he had recently found in the Oriental Institute collections.

That night I took an overnight Greyhound bus from Chicago to Louisville. The trip took seven hours, including a long stop in Indianapolis. Greyhound offers free wireless internet access in the stations and on the buses, so I spent much of the trip browsing the internet.

The bus arrived at 7:00 am on Sunday October 20 and my friend and colleague Karen Britt picked me up. She is the Byzantine Art History professor at the University of Louisville and our paths have crossed in Jordan and in India.

Karen and her husband Barry put me up in a three-story house down the block from their house in Old Louisville. Later that morning Karen and I walked around to look at the houses in the preservation district of Old Louisville where they live.

 
 

 

Karen and Barry in front of their house

 

At 1:00 pm I went to the gathering of relatives and friends in memory of my aunt Mary Hilton, who had died in September.

Mary Hilton was a younger sister of my mother and had spent her career as a biochemist first at Johns Hopkins University and then at the University of Louisville Medical School. Our paths rarely crossed – last in 2006 – and it had been decades since I had met some of my cousins. So recognizing that this would be an excellent opportunity to meet my mother’s relatives led me to decide to make the trip.

 

Fritz Hilton (Mary’s husband) speaking at the memorial gathering

The next day, Monday October 21, I went with Karen in the morning to the University of Kentucky campus where I spent a couple hours in the library. That afternoon I went with Karen and Barry to the nearby Falls of the Ohio nature area, where some fossil-bearing rocks are exposed.

 The fossil-bearing rocks at the Falls of the Ohio nature area

That evening I had dinner with the Hilton relatives again, including one cousin who lives in France whom I may not have met since 1967.

The third day, Tuesday October 22, I went to the University, where I had arranged to meet the daughter of one of my cousins, who is a student there. Then in the afternoon Karen and I walked around the downtown Louisville area. An oversized replica of Michelangelo’s David statue along with red penguins on the roof of the adjacent building was a strange sight.
 

The David statue and the red penguins

An unfriendly no-parking sign on the wharf

We saw the exhibits of the Fraizer Museum, including an excellent temporary exhibit about Napoleon. That evening Karen and I had a long conversation about Byzantine mosaics, before I took the overnight bus back to Chicago.

The bus arrived in Chicago at 4:45 am on Wednesday October 23 and I hung out for a few hours before going to the University of Chicago campus, where I browsed in the Oriental Institute Archives library for a while and chatted with people. In the afternoon I went to the O’Hare airport where I got a bus to Rockford, arriving at 4:00 pm. I checked into a hotel for the night, as I have done several times before, since there is no inexpensive way to get from Chicago to Dubuque other than the once-a-day early morning bus.

Rome October 16-17

I spent my third day in Rome, Wednesday October 16, doing more sight-seeing. I first went to the Spanish Steps, where I found the view marred by an obtrusive Prada advertisement.
  

 

The view from the Spanish Steps with the advertisement for Prada

I then walked around the Villa Borghese park area. I was surprised to find a replica of Shakespeare’s London Globe Theater there where his plays are performed.

 

The Globe Theater

The Villa Borghese with its art museum is one of the places where visitors need to book admission tickets in advance, which I had not done. There were no tickets available for the next two days, so I kept on walking around the park grounds there.

One of the secondary monumental buildings in the Villa Borghese grounds

I then took a tram across the city and returned to the hotel for a nap. In the afternoon I went to the Circus Maximus and walked around the perimeter of the Forum area.

 

The Roman Forum

 I then reached the Capitolian Museums, which I toured for a couple of hours.

 

The statue in the courtyard of the Capitolian Museum getting its inscription repainted

Then after sunset I walked around further and visited the Church of Sts. Cosmas and Damianos, before returning to the hotel.

Later that evening I went to a movie theater near my hotel for the 10:30 showing of Gravity dubbed into Italian. My weak knowledge of Italian was not a problem for following the plot of this action film.

On my fourth day in Rome, Thursday October 17, I first went to the Castel Sant’Angelo and then walked around the city center, stopping at the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain and other sites along the way, including a political demonstration.

The Castel Sant’Angelo 

 

The interior of the Pantheon

A small political demonstration at an Egyptian obelisk

 In the afternoon I went to the Church of Mary of the Angels and the adjacent Baths of Diocletian Museum and then at 6:30 I went to the Basilica of St. Paul, arriving just after it closed, so I walked around a while, before returning to the hotel.

 

The courtyard of the Museum at the Baths of Diocletian

I had hoped to meet Ivana Kvetanova again before I left, but our attempts to communicate were thwarted when the SMS messages she tried to send me that evening did not come through until my flight arrived in Chicago the following day.

Rome October 14-15

I arrived in Rome on Monday October 14 at the start of a four-day visit, before heading on to the USA. This was my first time in Rome.

My flight arrived early in the morning and I took a bus into the Termini central train station. It was too early to check into my hotel near the Cipro Metro station north of the Vatican – the proprietor had sent me an email the day before asking me to specify a time of arrival – so I got a day Metro pass and took the A metro line to its two terminal stations and back. I then walked around the area of the Vatican, before checking into my hotel at noon. At the Termini station I made the foolish mistake of changing 100 US dollars into Euros. The rate should have been around 70 Euros, but the initial offer was 50 Euros and when I objected, the person at the counter offered me a rate of 59 Euros, still a major rip-off.

After a long nap in the hotel, I walked around the area of the Vatican, ending up in St Peter’s Square. The square was filled with weather-beaten chairs.

 

St Peters Square

St Peter’s Square is where I had arranged to meet Ivana Kvetanova, an archaeology colleague from Slovakia who had been a research fellow at ACOR in 2010. She is currently in Rome finishing a two-year study program at the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology.

Ivana, who is a certified tour guide for Rome, came at 6:15 and she gave me a wonderful personal tour of Rome by night. We started by taking a bus up to the Gianicolo Hill and the Garibaldi statue there with a lovely view of Rome at dusk. We then walked down to the Trastevere area and had dinner, before continuing our walk through the city past the Tiberina Island, the Jewish Quarter, the Marcello Theater, the Farnese Palace, and the Navona Square, ending up at the Castel Sant’Angelo.

The next day, Tuesday October 15, I first went to the Church of St. Maria Maggiore, before going at to the nearby Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, where I met Ivana and Carmello Pappalardo, one of the Franciscans who had been working at Mount Nebo in Jordan in recent years; we went out for a quick coffee.

 

Carmello and Ivana

I then spent the rest of the day sight-seeing, by walking from the Church of St. Maria Maggiore to St John Lateran. I stopped at the Church of St. Praxedes and then went to the Museum of Oriental Art. I was the only visitor in the museum during the hour I was there, unlike most every place else I went that was overrun with visitors. I was especially interested in the museum’s collection of early Buddhist art.

An early Buddhist stone carving in the Museum of Oriental Art

I then proceeded down the street to the Church of the Holy Martyrs Marcellinus and Peter in Lateran and then arrived at the big Basilica of St John Lateran. My iPhone camera was not up to the task of taking good indoor photographs of these churches.

 

The Basilica of St John Lateran

 I then walked around further, passing by the Colosseum.

The Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine under restoration

I then took the B Metro line to its end terminals and back, before returning to my hotel for a long afternoon nap; the metro lines are mostly underground, so my metro rides ended up being of limited interest. That evening I walked around the area of my hotel for a while.

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.