2300 Ancient Sites on Google Earth

Kampyr Tepe (Uzbekistan)

On several occasions I have blogged on the possibilities of Google Earth and its online spin-off, Google Maps. My last blog on this topic was a bit over half a year ago, when I had some 1700 items available. In the meantime, I have added more than 550 ancient sites to my list, from all quarters of the ancient world. The grand total now is 2366.

The online version is here and the masterfile can be downloaded here. If you use the latter, do not forget the directory NEW/OFF-TOPIC, which contains many others, still unqualified markers.

1700 Ancient Sites on Google Earth

Hakemi Use (Turkey)

What you are looking for, is here.

Qasr Bshir

Qasr Bshir

A visit to Qasr Bshir ought to be obligatory to any visitor to Jordan. The Roman castle, founded at the end of the third century, is not a ruin, as so often, but is almost intact. It is a square limes fort of about 50×50 meters with four towers, so that it is often typified as a “quadriburgium”.

The most amazing aspect of the best-preserved Roman castle in Jordan, however, is that you will be alone. For those who cannot believe that, I will repeat it: you won’t find a soul at a site that is arguably the kingdom’s third archaeological site, after Petra and Jerash.

This is all the more surprising because Jordan’s Castel del Monte is situated almost next to the Desert Highway, the main road from Damascus to Amman to Saudi Arabia. To reach it, go from Qatrana to the north. At your left hand, you will pass the “Petra Tourist Complex” (terrible coffee); after this, take the first asphalt road to the left. It is perpendicular to the highway, leading almost straight to the west. After you have passed the first of two electricity lines, the road turns to the right and winds itself to the northwest. After some eight minutes, you will see the fort to your right. The walk to the castle takes about 15-20 minutes and is easy.

Your satellite photo is here and the new Livius page is here. It’s page #3500, by the way.

1600 Ancient Sites on Google Earth

The center of Alexandria

What you are looking for, is here.

Paris, Louvre

Persian soldier from Susa

It is hard to write a review of the Louvre in Paris, because it is one of the world’s largest museums. There are many departments, and each one of them might, in its field, have been a museum of the first order. For example, it is hard to find another Egyptological museum in Europa that equals the Louvre.

The museum also has a reputation for interesting expositions – one on Meroe and one on the archaeology of Saudi Arabia during my latest visit – and one ought to visit the Louvre twice a year to keep in touch. The people of Paris are unusually blessed.

Echnaton

If you visit the museum for the first time, you will be surprised by the pyramid-shaped entrance. Use the time you lose to pass the bomb check and buy a ticket to look at it, because it is a monument of the first order.

I already mentioned the Egyptian department, where you can easily spend a full day. There are portraits of the Egyptian kings and objects from daily life, and what is even better: the full history is dealth with, so you will also find objects from the first millennium BCE. The Greek, Roman, and Coptic age are not ignored either, although you need to go to Greek department for the royal portraits of the Ptolemies.

An Arabian warrior

The Egyptian department is deservedly famous, and attracts many visitors, who are usually exhausted when they are half-way their tour. Usually, they will take the shortest route to the exit, which brings them through the departments of Cypriote, Arabian, Palmyrene, and Phoenician art – which are, as a consequence, full of people who are not interested in the objects. That is pity, because these rooms alone justify a trip to Paris. Still, if you manage to ignore the crowd of tired visitors to the Egyptian department, you will certainly enjoy coffins from Sidon, Byblus, and Carthage, Nabataean inscriptions, and statues from Cyprus. One of my favorites is a relief of one of the divine triad of Palmyra. You will need half a day to study it well.

The Code of Hammurabi

Next to it is the Oriental department. The most famous object is, of course, the Code of Hammurabi. Don’t concentrate on the diorite monolith only, but also look in the small display in the same room, because there you will see cuneiform tablets with the same text – one of them written more than a millennium later and proving that these laws had become some kind of Mesopotamian classic, and it is probably no coincidence that the division of these Old Babylonian laws returns in the Ten Commandments.

Early Sumerian mask

The Code of Hammurabi was found in Susa, which is a prominent part of the oriental collection. You will also see a wall decorated with Achaemenid soldiers and cuneiform tablets from this Iranian town. Other important excavations are Mari and Khorsabad, but there is a lot more to see. There are also rooms devoted to Jordan and western Syria; they are not adjacent to the eastern Syria and the other Levantine rooms, which is a bit impractical – but the Mesha stela is worth the detour. You need a full day to study the entire oriental department.

Pompey

The Roman department is surprisingly small. Yet, there is a lot of fine sculpture, including a nice series of portraits of Roman rulers – including the emperor Inconnus about whom I already blogged. Next to it is a comparatively small Etruscan department. A galery of rather mediocre statues brings you to the room devoted to Roman art that was later restored, which is great fun: usually, you can immediately see which part is ancient and which is an addition. (Here, you will also find Canova’s famous Amor and Psyche.) You need about half a day to see it all, read the explanatory signs, and take your photos.

Alexander: the Azara herm

The Greek department is larger – you again need a full day to study it all. The two most famous pieces are the expressive Nike of Samothrake and the famous Venus of Milo. The latter is more or less the museum’s raison d’être. Napoleon had looted the Italian museums, but after he had found his Waterloo, all those works of art had to be returned. In an age in which it was believed that inspiration by great art created great minds, and that Greek art was the most inspirational, the emptying of the Louvre was believed to be a national disaster, but fortunately, the Venus of Milo was found. Now, France could compete again with the British, who had the Elgin Marbles. That the armless deity was a Hellenistic and not a Classical statue, was ignored – the inscription which proves it, is now conveniently lost.

Croesus

The Greek department also has some fine temple remains (from a/o Assos), the Tanagra statuettes that I increasingly love, and lots of pottery. Unfortunately, the rooms with Greek ceramics have rcently been closed. I haven’t seen the Croesus to the left for quite some time: last time, the room was closed to install better protection; before that, it was on loan to another museum.

The crowds are very large, and you may count yourself lucky that I did not bring you to the paintings. This makes a visit to the Louvre a bit difficult, and you must prepare yourself well; fortunately, the museum’s website is excellent. Four days is the minimum for the ancient departments.

Demetrius Poliorcetes

Finally, I must mention one little gem that is often ignored and where you can, consequently, quietly look at the objects: the room with metal objects. There is some fine silver work, but you will also see the helmet of a gladiator, a nice statuette of the Tyche of Antioch, the head of Demetrius Poliorcetes, a hoplite’s panoply, a curse tablet from the Crimea, Roman military diploma’s, and so on.

But unfortunately, that’s the only part of the museum where you will not meet many other people. In fact, the museum is too big, and I think that it would be wiser to split it into smaller museums.

Berlin, Pergamonmuseum

The Pergamon Altar, when it’s not too crowded

The Pergamonmuseum is probably Berlin’s most famous cultural institution. It contains three major collections which, each in itself, might have been fine museums: a classical department, a department of ancient Near Eastern art, and a department of Islamic art. What they have in common is their connection to the former Ottoman Empire. In each of these departments, you will see splendid works of art.

Ishtar Gate

The museum is named after the city of Pergamon, where German archaeologists found the famous altar that now stands in the central room of the museum. (In fact, the museum was built around the altar.) The north wing is devoted to Greek and Roman art, and you will find archaic sphinxes, classical reliefs, and so on.

The south wing contains the department of ancient Near Eastern art, which includes the famous Ištar Gate from Babylon and the ancient procession road, which appears to date back to the Seleucid age. Among the other objects are orthostats from Tell Halaf, prehistoric finds from Uruk, the royal tombs of Assur, bronzes from Luristan, objects from Nineveh, and of course lots of cuneiform tablets. Among the most fascinating documents is a tablet that mentions the Judaean king Jehoiachin.

A late-Sasanian/early Islamic boar from Ctesiphon

If you go upstairs, you will find yourself in the department of Islamic art. Again, a complete building has been moved from its original location to the German capital: this time, a substantial part of the wall of the early Islamic Mshatta, one of Jordan’s desert castles. But there’s a lot more to see. I must have been gazing at a splendid manuscript of Saadi‘s Rose Garden for at least half an hour.

It is easy to spend a day in the Pergamonmuseum, and that is also a problem: it can be extremely crowded. When I was there last June, I could easily enter the building, but last week, early August, there was a long queue. When I entered the museum, it felt muggy, and I wondered whether the humidity wasn’t dangerous for the objects.

Two Poorly Understood Sites

Rujm al-Malfouf

To be honest, I wanted to call this topic “two mysterious sites”, but as we all know, ancient historians must avoid clichés like “mystery”, “lost city”, and “treasure” – that would be the equivalent of “gathering war clouds”, “ghosts from the past”, or “child of nature”. Yet, today I have to introduce two sites that are, well, quite mysterious:

• Takht-e Rostam: a stone structure near Persepolis (Iran)
• Rujm al-Malfouf: an Ammonite Iron Age fort in Amman (Jordan)

Go there to learn more, and understand less. Two other items: LacusCurtius‘ Bill Thayer has added an article on Roman fire worship to his Antiquaries’ Shoebox, and on his blog, Bill Heroman refers to a common mistake about the Temple of Herod.

Tourism and Archaeology in Jordan

The North Gate at Lejjun

Travel is easy in Jordan. The roads are fine, taxis are everywhere, food is nice, hotels are good, the people are friendly, and they usually speak English. A surprisingly high number of people also speaks Italian. Your cell phone is working, you can read the international newspapers, and many hotels have access to the internet.

Of course there are the usual sources of irritation. Women are gazed after and even married ladies will have to cope with “funny” remarks like “you don’t need sugar in your tea because you’re sweet enough”. You can often see dollar signs in the eyes of the people: you’re expected to pay lavish tips even after you’ve already paid six times the normal price for a bottle of water. And of course there’s the usual hypocrisy – the Petra authorities request visitors to leave the site before sunset “for safety reasons”, while they also allow a spectacle called “Petra by night”, suggesting that it less unsafe than implied. Yet, if you can ignore these things, which are common in the Near East, you will be surprised how easy it is to travel through Jordan.

The Deir 'Alla Inscription, carelessly stored away in the Amman Museum.

The main ancient monuments are Petra, in a landscape full of fascinating, multicolored rocks, and Jerash, which only lacks a romantic setting in the desert to make it comparable to Palmyra. There are several Crusader castles, like Kerak and Shobeq, and religious sites, like Mount Nebo and the “Baptism Site”. In the eastern part of the country, you are able to visit the desert castles from the Umayyad and Abbasid age. So, this country is a garden of delights for archaeologists and historians, and even better: you can take your photos almost everywhere – something that needs a lot of discussion in the museums of Damascus or Cairo.

Yet, tourism is very one-sided. It is a source of income, not of study or inspiration. Jerash and Petra have been designed to enable as many people as possible to visit the sites and leave behind their money, and you will find it hard to buy a good book. I have never seen an inventory of Nabataean inscriptions or the catalog of the museum of Amman – books that you can easily find in, say, Turkey, Syria, or Iran. In the end, the Rough Guide and the DuMont Reiseführer remained our main source of ready reference.

The baths of Gadara

I was particularly intrigued by Qasr Bshir, one of the best-preserved Roman forts in the Near East, and a perfect place to illustrate how the province of Arabia was a net tax-importing province. Any tourist guide would love to use it to explain the mechanisms of Roman imperialism, but in fact, its existence is almost a secret (although it is mentioned in the DuMont Reiseführer). You won’t see a road sign, at least.

There are many examples of this. Tourism is concentrated on several splendid sites, but there is little else. Archaeology is treated as a source of income, not as something intrinsically interesting. And this is a pity, because in this way, the Jordanian people will identify their past with western tourists from whom money can be extracted; they will not accept the past as their own as long as they are unaware that those ancient ruins next to their village are more than just a source of income.

Several causes may be mentioned to explain this attitude. The Hashemite dynasty is young and may want to distance itself from the past, presenting itself as the bringers of prosperity after ages of poverty. And it is difficult to present a “national” past in a country that has a very, very large Palestinian minority. I do not know. Yet, the result is that the past is neglected. To put it bluntly, Jordan is selling its past to westerners. That is not a good thing.

Petra

The Tomb of Sextius Florentinius

It is hard to not to know that Petra is the main archaeological site of Jordan. In Amman, there’s a musical on stage, aptly called “Petra Rocks”; companies call themselves after the Nabataean capital; posters of the town can be seen in nearly every souvenir shop; the famous view of the Treasury is reproduced as a mosaic. I was anxious to visit it, but I somehow did not dare to expect too much of it. I had the same experience during my first visits to Rome, Pompeii, Delphi, Persepolis, Lepcis Magna, Giza, Palmyra, and Nemrud Daği. Perhaps this is one of my minds’ curious strategies to prevent a disappointment.

This time, it turned out to be a wise strategy. Rome, Delphi, and Persepolis will always surpass the highest expectations and a visit to Palmyra, Pompeii, the pyramids, or Lepcis will never become a routine either; on the other hand, Nemrud Daği had no magic left when I arrived there for the second time. I think that Petra will belong to this same category. (I am aware that I am superbly blessed to have had the prerogative to be able to visit and revisit so many sites, and to have a friend with whom I have been able to share so many experiences.)

Petra is interesting and beautiful, but it is not Rome, Delphi, and Persepolis. Situated in a landscape reminiscent of Cappadocia, it is nature, not architecture that makes it special. The many funeral monuments are impressive and some of them are really beautiful, but that is all there is to it. You will never walk through the house of an Augustus, the temple of a Plutarch, or the palace of Xerxes. The site appeals to our sense of beauty and is therefore interesting for art historians and tourists; but to historians and other people interested in the depth of time, it has less to offer.

This does not mean that I am disappointed. My mind’s odd trick had helped me not to expect too much. It’s funny how the subconscious works.

Qasr Bshir

Leaving one of the most splendid sites of Jordan

A visit to Qasr Bshir ought to be obligatory to any visitor to Jordan. The Roman castle, founded in c.300, is not a ruin, as so often, but is almost intact. It is a square limes fort of about 50×50 meters with four towers, so that it is often typified as a “quadriburgium”. That it is a fascinating place can be deduced from the fact that two young women in our company, who were not known for their great interest in military architecture, were the last ones to leave.

The most amazing aspect of the best-preserved Roman castle in Jordan, however, is that you will be alone. For those who cannot believe that, I will repeat it: you won’t find a soul at a site that is arguably the kingdom’s third archaeological site, after Petra and Jerash.

This is all the more surprising because Jordan’s Castel del Monte is situated almost next to the Desert Highway, the main road from Damascus to Amman to Saudi Arabia. To reach it, go from Qatrana to the north. At your left hand, you will pass the “Petra Tourist Complex” (terrible coffee); after this, take the first asphalt road to the left. It is perpendicular to the highway, leading almost straight to the west. After you have passed the first of two electricity lines, the road turns to the right and winds itself to the northwest. After some eight minutes, you will see the fort to your right. The walk to the castle takes about 15-20 minutes and is easy. Your satellite photo is here.

Decapolis and Capitals

The ruins of Scythopolis, one of the towns of the Decapolis

Continuing my series of articles on Jordan in Antiquity, I added two articles today: one about the Decapolis and one about capitals. The latter is meant as an addition to yesterday’s piece on the Nabataeans, who tried to stress their cultural autonomy by designing a building order of their own, that was not recognizably Greek. If I wanted to explain it, I needed to show photos of other capitals: the Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and so on. For one reason or another, I enjoyed writing this piece of antiquarism.

The Decapolis was part of the original series of Jordanian articles. It was a group of towns in northern Jordan, northeastern Israel, and southwestern Syria. The name suggests that there were ten cities, but there were at least twelve, and at some point even eighteen members of the Decapolis. What they shared, was their (accepted) Greek legacy. This made them completely different from the Nabataeans, who rejected Hellenism.

The Decapolis is here and the capitals are here; and Bill made available a new text by Plutarch, On Tranquillity of the Mind.

The Nabataeans

Roman coin, commemorating the annexation of Nabataea (Valkhof, Nijmegen)

The Nabataeans were an Arabian tribe that, in the age of the Persian Empire, settled in the kingdom of Edom. The Greeks were unable to conquer them, although they tried in c.312 BCE, and the Nabataeans retained their independence, outside the Hellenistic world. Later, when the Roman commander Pompey the Great reorganized the Near East, they again managed to retain their autonomy.

The key to their independence was, at least partly, their control of the Incense Route: a caravan route through the western part of what is now Saudi Arabia, all the way to Yemen, where spices and incense could be found. As long as they controlled trade, they were left alone. However, once Rome had conquered Egypt, trade was increasingly often conducted by sailors, and Nabataean income diminished. In 106 CE, the Roman emperor Trajan annexed the country of the Nabataeans.

My new page on this subject is here.

Ammon

The Jabbok

Continuing my series on the antiquities of Jordan, here’s the second piece: the Ammonites. According to Numbers, their relation to Israel and Judah was determined by a conflict in the Late Bronze Age, when Amorites took control of the east bank of the river Jordan and founded two small kingdoms in land traditionally occupied by the Ammonites. Moses’ wandering Hebrews expelled the Amorites, and the tribes of Rueben and Gad settled on the east bank, creating a casus belli for times to come. Jeptha, Saul, and David are all credited with victorious campaigns against the Ammonites.

My article is here, and the next piece will be about the Edomites.

Moab

Moab and its neighbors

As I will be visiting Jordan pretty soon, I am reading a bit about the history of the Hashemite kingdom, and I will be adding articles to the website on its ancient history. First installment: Moab, an Iron Age kingdom directly east of the Dead Sea.

So far, not many texts have come to light from this area, but the Mesha Stela is quite interesting. As a political unit, Moab certainly existed in the Late Bronze age, and the Biblical book of Judges offers an interesting story about Moab’s king Eglon; more evidence for the history of Moab can be found in the books of Samuel and Kings. In the end, the kingdom shared the fate of Judah, Ammon, and Edom: after being vassal states of Assyria, they became subjects of Babylonia, Persia, and disappear from history in the Hellenistic age, when the Nabataeans became more powerful.

More about that later. The article on Moab is here.