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.

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.