Amman Citadel

Description

The temple stood on a podium 43 by 27 m (141 by 88 ft). The temple measured about 30 by 24 m (98 by 79 ft), with an additional outer sanctum of 121 by 72 m (397 by 236 ft).^{[citation needed]} The portico at the front of the temple had six columns c. 13.5 m (45 ft) tall, but there were no columns standing along the sides of the temple, as was the case with some other Roman temples. Some archaeologists^[who?] interpret the lack of remains of any additional columns as an indication that the temple was probably not finished, and believe the leftover marble was used to build the Byzantine church nearby.^{[citation needed]} The remains of the building and of the statue found near it offer reason to believe that the Amman temple was comparable in size with many of those in ancient Rome.

Deity

One of the main excavators of the most recent and very thorough archaeological and reconstruction campaign from the 1990s, Greek archaeologist and classical architect C. Kanellopoulos, writes in one of the resulting official publications that the name Great Temple of Amman should be preferred, as the deity venerated there cannot be securely identified.

Three years before the publication of Kanellopoulos's book, fellow ACOR chief excavator K. W. Russell wrote in an ACOR newsletter about the discovery of a new fragment of the temple's architrave inscription, which together with fragments discovered in the past made possible a reasonably secure reconstruction of the entire inscription. The reconstruction, produced by Russell and Kanellopoulos, speaks of "this Herculean sanctuary and festival-place". Russell corroborates this information with an inscription found in 1905 in another area of Amman, which speaks of a certain city magistrate as "the constructor of the Heracleion", or temple of Hercules. This allowed the researchers to identify the Citadel Hill temple with reasonable confidence as being dedicated to Hercules.

Kanellopoulos, however, maintains some doubts, not least due to the fact that the colossal statue whose meager remains have been discovered near the temple, appears to depict a female deity (see below at Colossal statue). Philadelphia had, in Kanellopoulos's words, two "dominant gods", Herakles and Astarte - one male and one female. The excavation report published by Russell together with fellow archaeologists Anthi Koutsoukou, Mohammad Najjar, and Ahmed Momani in 1997, i.e. six years after the discovery of the additional inscribed architrave fragment, is still cautiously titled The Great Temple of Amman: The Excavations.

During the 1990s digs, possibly cultic features along with six votive figurines were discovered underneath the Roman temple area, which might indicate that the site had been used for religious purposes during the Iron Age. It has also been noted that Herakles/Hercules was the interpretatio graeca of the Semitic god Melqart of the Tyreans, the better known Herakles-Melqart cult allowing to extrapolate on a similar synchretism between Herakles and Milkom, the supreme god of the Ammonites, still worshipped in Roman times in Ammonitis. A Milkom inscription dating to the Iron Age was found on Citadel Hill, allowing for justified speculations on a succession of local cults, progressing from Milkom to Herakles.

Colossal statue

The site also contains marble fragments of a colossal, partly stone-made statue,^{[citation needed]} estimated to have been around 13 m (42 ft) tall. All that remains are three fingers and an elbow. The statue was probably destroyed in an earthquake.^{[citation needed]}

Who was the statue depicting? Some identify it as representing Hercules, but C. Kanellopoulos writes that while the hand fragment (three fingers) and the elbow fragment look in every respect as being part of the same statue, the muscular structure around the elbow excludes the statue from depicting Herakles (the Greek iteration of Hercules), and the slender fingers and the fingernails look feminine. He reconstructs the statue as depicting a woman, most likely a female goddess, with the right hand raised and the left one relaxed, in a pose known from certain depictions of Athena. He notes that there were three female deity worshipped in Philadelphia: Athena, Astarte and Demetra, adding a fourth option, Tyche, who is depicted on local coinage in the style of Athena Hephaisteia (an Athenian iteration of the goddess associated with the Temple of Hephaestus, famously depicted by Alcamenes). Kanellopoulos describes Herakles and Astarte as being Philadelphia's "dominant gods".

Main palace

The most significantly preserved element is a reception hall or audience hall at the entrance to the palace, built over the foundations of an earlier Roman/Byzantine building. It has a square floor plan, with a central cruciform space of four iwans, with smaller square rooms occupying the four corners. The central space is covered today by a dome, although this is a modern reconstruction and it is possible that the original structure was not domed. The walls are decorated with rows of blind niches featuring ornamental rosettes and palmettes. This decoration, along with the arrangement of four iwans, suggest the influence of Iranian architecture, particularly of Sasanian structures in present-day Iraq and possibly the work of craftsmen from this region. Behind this reception hall was a square courtyard and a colonnaded street, flanked by apartments on either side, which led to another courtyard, an iwan, and finally another domed cruciform hall that may have been a throne hall.

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  Exterior of the domed and cruciform reception hall at the entrance to the palace
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  Floor plan of the cruciform reception hall
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  Remains of the colonnaded street behind the reception hall, leading to further rooms
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  Northern courtyard at the end of the colonnaded street
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  Cruciform room in the northern section of the palace
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  The changing room of the bathhouse

Cistern

East of the reception hall are the remains of a bathhouse as well as a large circular water reservoir or cistern, which is 16 metres (52 ft) in diameter and 5 metres (16 ft) deep. The reservoir drew water from other parts of the hill via two drains, one of which has a shaft that may have helped to filter the water. It supplied water to the baths, latrines, and other areas of the complex.

Mosque

South of the palace, across from the reception hall, are the remains of a mosque. Like other mosques of this era, it has a hypostyle prayer hall and central peristyle courtyard. Its northern façade was marked by a series of buttresses and decorative niches. It is an example of early mosques that imitated the Persian-style apadana hall, characterized by a "forest of columns"; these mosques are normally found in Iran and Iraq.

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  Reconstructed gate of the Umayyad mosque
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  Remains of the interior columns and courtyard of the mosque

History

The museum was established in 1951 on top of Amman's Citadel Hill, among the remains of the Citadel in the heart of the city.

The museum formerly housed some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the only Copper scroll, which are now on display in the more recently established Jordan Museum, along with some of the Ain Ghazal statues.

Location

The museum is located in the Amman Citadel in Amman, one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world. Two historic sites are nearby on top of the hill, the Roman Temple of Hercules that dates back to the 2nd century, and an Umayyad palace that dates back to the 8th century. Prior to 1967, the museum had a branch in East Jerusalem.

Time periods represented

The collections of the museum belong to the following periods:

• Paleolithic period: 1,000,000–10,000 years ago
• Neolithic period: 12,000 years ago up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age
  • Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN): 8,300–5,500 BC, the most famous artifacts that belong to this period being the Ain Ghazal statues.
  • Pottery Neolithic (PN): 5,500–4,300 BC
• Chalcolithic: 4,300–3,300 BC
• Bronze Age
  • Early Bronze Age: 3,300–1,900 BC
  • Middle Bronze Age: 1,900–1,550 BC
  • Late Bronze Age: 1,550–1,200 BC
• Iron Age: 1,200–550 BC
• Persian period: c. 550–332 BC
• Hellenistic period: c. 332–63 BC
• Nabatean period
• Roman period
• Byzantine period
• Rashidun period
• Umayyad period
• Abbasid period
• Crusader/Ayyubid period