Postcards from the past: Madaba, Mt Nebo, Um er-Rasas

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Madaba, mosaics, Mt Nebo, ruins, Um er-Rasas

January 19, 2001

Today I travel to Madaba along the Jordan Valley and then into the hills, in silence, on the silent back seat of the dig bus. I become aware of car wrecks, two new ones over an edge which has no guard rail.

We run into trouble with the tourist police when we reach Madaba: we’re not a designated tourist bus, and we go up a one way street the wrong way. Finally we straggle in light rain to the early Byzantine church of St George, which hosts a mosaic map, dating from the 6th century AD, the colour still stunning. It’s a map of the Middle East, including the oldest surviving cartographic depiction of the Holy Land.

I escape from the group and somehow manage to find the archaeological park, the remnants of an old building displaying mosaics, some of them in place as paving, some hung on the wall. One is the victim of iconoclasts: cloven hooves and a tail remain and the rest of the animal has been overlaid with a tree. I finally track down the source of my growing attraction to mosaic: the restfulness of a limited palette, the same attraction as that of traditional Aboriginal art perhaps.

I join local people going about their business, walking the streets past stalls selling schwarma, falafels, plastic buckets and vegetables.

Soon it’s time to return to the bus to visit Mt Nebo, where I stand where Moses stood. There below me is the Dead Sea, blue but edged with the whiteness of salt. The landscape is bare except for groves of olive trees. Inside the partially excavated church are more mosaics, and a very large vicious-looking scorpion – no wonder people don’t warm to my star sign.

We travel on to Um er-Rasas through a desolate landscape. We come, in a bleak wind, to a strange tower, maybe a rare trace of ascetic monks who retreated to the top of a pillar. The ruins include an almost intact cistern, collapsed arches and partial excavations. Further on are scattered black ruins, perhaps of a Roman military outpost. Inside a vast tin shed we find a mosaic showing buildings and fruit trees contained by a wonderful border. Again iconoclasts have been at work, darning out the offensive human forms between the fruit trees.

The bus journey back is long, through rain and into dark. The hill where I saw crashed vehicles in the morning has me invoking my protective angel.

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Postcards from the past: Umm Qais

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Jordan, Umm Qais

January 2001

Umm Qais was the second Friday excursion from the dig at Pella. Our route was along the Jordan Valley, armed with our passports because we were so close to Israel, but a seller of cos lettuce directed us up a very steep windy road, past a dam and olive trees instead.

Umm Qais, fortress and frontier town in ancient times, is now an extensive suite of ruins, with a view to the Gollan Heights and down through haze to the Sea of Galilee. We entered the ruins through an Ottoman village of black and white stone. The columns in the ruins included basalt, not the creamy pink of Jerash. I went through an arch which was in fact the vomitorium of a basalt-seated theatre which was being reconstructed. The top rows were a jumble of stone.

The cardo paving was quite intact, with clearly defined wheel ruts, and grass growing through the paving. It was edged with marble supporting columns. The arcade of shops with squared lintels was very similar to the souq in Damascus, although more regal in stone.

A large stone door, opening on two round stone hinges led into an underground mausoleum, with burial niches still containing sarcophagi.

We ate lunch – mezze, chicken and chips, and a can of beer – on a terrace with a spectacular view, the sound of goatbells the musical accompaniment, and then drove back along the Jordan Valley, past flimsy guard posts, and very close to the traffic travelling Israeli roads.

For a much more detailed look at Ajloun, Jerash and Umm Qais, read Cathy’s account of her adventures, and revel in her wonderful photos.

Postcards from the past: Jerash

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Ajlun Castle, Jerash

January, 2001

Friday is my rostered shower day (how I long for a shower!) and also excursion day, this week to Jerash. We are on the road in the mini-bus by 8.30. We stop first at Ajlun Castle, occupying unbelievable steepness, and a rabbit warren inside. The views are stunning, out over red soil, olive trees and rocky landscape to hazy hills. I avoid the rush to souvenir stalls and enjoy a short prowl around inside the ruins.

The main destination is however Jerash, the most complete of the three Roman ruins I’ve encountered, and according to some the most complete outside Italy.

First we visit the hippodrome where one of the archaeologists has been analysing human remains, a pile of bones and traces of lime, maybe victims of the plague. She gives a graphic description of the dangers of chariot racing.

Then we’re let loose on the ruins and I manage to extricate myself from distracting company. The cardo paving is still there and although it’s been disturbed by earthquake the wheel-marks of chariots are visible in the stone, a tangible link with the busyness of this wealthy Roman city, beautifully sited in fertile countryside. The agora is quite small, with a fountain in the middle and spaces behind the columns for shops. I pass a tumble of stones, the ruins of the baths, and the stone dome of an Umayyad mosque.

There are two theatres in good repair, still in use for the Jerash festival where you can experience theatre, orchestral and traditional music, and an arts and craft market. I sit on the stone seats after taking giant strides to reach them.

But I really encounter the grandeur that was Rome at the temple of Artemis, walking up the stairs, flight after flight, and just about reaching the top before the towering columns become visible, then more steps to the sanctuary area.

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Postcards from the past: Pella finds

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archaeology, Jordan, objects unearthed, Pella

January 2001

The day before my dig experience at Pella began, a couple of things are found with “diagnostic potential”: the side of what was probably a cult stand decorated with a pattern; and a small piece with a Greek inscription. This prepares me for the minuteness of discoveries and knocks on the head any Tutankhamen’s-tomb fantasies I might have had.

My first trench excitement happens as I’m scraping out the pit in XXXIIG. Something the size and shape of a broken paddle pop stick emerges from the dirt. It is in fact shaped bone, polished to a gleam and is worthy of its own plastic bag.

Some days there is a lull for volunteers as the local workmen move piles of dirt. This is a chance to see what is happening elsewhere on the dig. In the next trench they’ve just exposed two loom weights, in a small room which may have been a loom room. In another trench, the lid of an amphora, more complete than any others found on this site so far. One trench is particularly giving: a ceramic horse’s head; a female figurine with poked-hole nipples; a broken but reconstitutable vessel; a piece of faience; a couple of scarabs; an iron knife blade. Abu Khalifa found a tiny blue frit bead – the trench men have eyes like hawks attuned by long practice to notice impossible things as they wield their picks.. In my trench, in my pit, a bowl. These are all designated “plot objects”, up to 100 of them halfway through this dig session.

Sometimes trench work seems pointless, scraping away, thinking I have a pit, only to be disappointed. No treasures for me. The sharp-eyed pickman is the one who finds treasures: a couple of loom-weights, and an almost complete juglet. Eventually I figure out that I’ll be happier if I give myself a goal – this square, self-designated, and now that.

The tedium is broken by a summoning cry: a basalt grinder and a grindstone; half a basalt bowl; and half a basalt ring; a copper alloy pin; and one day a huge piece of column being moved 20 feet down a slight slope by half a dozen men with crowbars, everyone gathering to watch, applauding as it’s angled upright against a baulk.

One day, large shards, emerge from dirt in our trench – a pot, about 900 BC, the time of King Solomon. One of the volunteers unearths it and the dreaded Maggie takes over “Because I want speed, not because I don’t trust you, or because I want honour and glory.” Oh, no.

Another day, as the trench foreman begins wielding his pick he exposes signs of a partially unbroken 12th BC pithos (a large storage container). The design around its neck may have been the imprint of rope. After pottery sort, three of us return to the trench until sunset to retrieve as much as possible: a whole base, bits of rim and handle, and heap of shards as big as my hand. This excavation urgency is to make sure no marauders helped themselves to bits and pieces when the site is unwatched at night.

The sorting and classifying of finds is in the hands of the experts. Each day’s haul is basketed according to materials: flint, groundstone, ceramics, shell and metal. Then it’s assessed and sent off for cataloguing, cleaning, drawing and photographing. Potential museum pieces are identified: good stuff stays in Jordan, but duplicates might end up in the Nicholson Museum at Sydney University.

Sometimes after work I return to the site. I watch the dig draughtsman as he draws the top of a piece of wall to scale, and look around taking in the site of 8000 years of human history. It is peaceful on the hillside in the late afternoon sun, absorbing the feeling of this place of Roman theatres, Byzantine Churches, late Bronze Age and Iron Age temples and administrative buildings, and towering Tell Husn.

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Here’s another version of life on the Pella dig, with excellent photos.

Postcards from the past: In the trenches at Pella

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archaeology, in the trenches, Pella

January, 2001

My first job in the trenches is to knock down a Hellenistic wall using a pick. I chip away at fill to level off behind a string-line while large stones topple around my feet. Then I clear them away. After lunch I trowel out foundation fill, mainly pottery shards, but also a tiny piece of oxidised copper, and some minute pieces of flint. For the last 20 minutes I continue destroying the wall, keeping it cleanly vertical with a plum-bob.

I gradually learn that archaeology is another name for destruction. I bash away at a wall with a monkoosh and then clean up the mess I make with a hand shovel and a mustereen. I expose and smooth a silky grey surface: Electra demolishes it.

I become enamoured of my monster pit. There my job is clear: to delineate and excavate. It’s my pit, my familiar place, where I feel competent. After a Friday trip to Umm Qais I whizz back down to the dig site to look at it.

I’m not so competent when it comes to baulk-cleaning, where I have to be very sure nothing tumbles down to contaminate meticulous layering. I know I’m not good at this, so when Stephen yells “Straighten it up. It’s as round as a whore’s bum” I’m amused rather than affronted.

Sometimes I am snappy and tearful: I can’t manage the plum-bob; I crack the back of my fingers and make them bleed; and Electra calls me “Margaret”. Sometimes Maggie gives me a quick succession of jobs, none of which I have time to get stuck into. Sometimes when I clean a clump of rocks ready for photography, Steve says “Great job” and I suspect sarcasm. Sometimes it’s hard on the wrist: “scrape hard enough to make your wrist hurt” is Maggie’s standard.

But I become more agile, hopping around the trench as it becomes noticeably deeper, and gradually learn to yell “Bidi goofah” to summon a man to empty my bucket made from a recycled tyre. Try to do it myself so I don’t have to shout orders, and they glare at me. Sometimes four men line up, chanting as they pass the buckets along the chain.

On the second last day, it begins to rain. When I poke my head above the trenches at knock off time, I’m dazzled by the sudden greening of Tell Husn, till now quite barren.

Every time I look around the past is visible, and so is the meticulous task of unearthing it.

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Postcards from the past: daily routine on a dig

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archaeological dig, cleaning, Jordan, Pella, sorting

My series of Postcards from the past came to a sudden halt a while back, mainly because I reached a point where I had plenty of memories, but no images. I’ve decided to deal with that hiccup by means of a words-only interlude.

The story so far: in 2000 I was a paying volunteer on an archaeological dig at Pella in Jordan, with a team from Sydney University.

There were three aspects of the work I did on the dig: cleaning a variety of finds; sorting the morning’s haul; and action in the trenches. I have photos of work in the trench, but for some reason the camera didn’t accompany me when I was cleaning and sorting.

Inside work

On alternate days we worked inside, or around the dig house. My first archaeological job was at the cleaning table, toothbrushing bones in water: camel or donkey teeth; a small lower jaw; some brown marbled bone; and heaps of slivers I didn’t dare discard. In the midst of bone I came across part of a small ceramic oil lamp. I cleaned mud from its spout gently with a toothpick.

There were two unexpected jobs. One was poking holes in cheap plastic sieves. The other was the manufacture of cotton buds: we sat there, intently winding cotton wool around a matchstick. We used the buds to clean glass with ethanol. This required deep concentration: the glass was delicate and often sharp. In my pile, there were a few very fine clear fragments, some with a subdued opalescent surface, some with dirt-filled tunnels below the rim; and a few heavy green bits. One piece stood out: a beautifully shaped handle, green with long swirls of red.

More energetically, we relocated boxes dating back to 1984 from between two mud brick walls, forming a chain and working in dusty camaraderie. I absconded before we were too deep amongst spider-webs, beetles and scorpions, fearful of the legendary camel spiders that gnaw hunks out of camel humps.

Pottery sorting

After a morning in the trenches, buckets of shards were lugged across to the yard of the dig house and emptied one by one onto mats for sorting.

Steve, the dig director, circulated, keeping an eye on volunteers and offering advice: “That big heavy clumsy piece is a tile. Keep it: it’s complete” or “That green piece there with rounded ribbing stays. There’s nothing else like it in this lot.” I was anxiously meticulous, until Steve explained the process in rigorous scientific terms: “Look at it. If you think that’s one of those, chuck it on on that pile. If it looks much the same as the other stuff in the pile, that’s where it belongs.”

All painted pieces qualified for keeping, as did any piece at all distinctive or unique. At the end of the session we counted the discards and dumped them in the pile outside the compound, carefully mapped as a scrap pile. When we left the dig, we each souvenired a few shards.

This work was necessary and sometimes exciting, but the trenches were where the real action was.

Postcards from the Past: Tell Husn, Pella

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archaeology, Pella, Tell Husn

9th January, 2001

We drive up the Jordan Valley, green, fertile paradise for vegetable growers. When we arrive at Pella we’re taken on an overview tour of the dig site which leaves me reeling: tombs, fortress trenches, the towering Tell Husn, and in the valley of the dead stream, Roman ruins, columns, a church, and a theatre. We pass the pottery dump, carefully marked on the map as such for the benefit of future archaeologists; the walls of a mosque; and an Islamic cemetery, where local children are still buried, giving them a direct route to paradise.

Our guide tells us they found two things today with “diagnostic potential”: a small shard with a Greek inscription, and the decorated side of what was probably a cult stand. We learn a crucial distinction: red dirt is ground dirt; brown dirt marks human additions. I become quite expert distinguishing dirt colour once I start troweling.

However, we don’t work on this first day. We cross the valley to Tell Husn, Mound of the Fortress, breaking a lock with a crowbar to do so. A stiff climb, boobytrapped by loose rocks, takes us past chamber tombs carved in the hillside between 64 BC and 400 AD. We walk down worn stairs through a rock door that opens smoothly on a rock hinge. Inside are several niches, some still containing sarcophagi.

On the top of the Tell there are large level stone platform foundations that take us back to 3000 BC, earlier than Egypt’s Great Pyramid. In another area there is a large complex dating from 300-600 AD. The ground floor walls of stone are still there, but the upper storeys of mud brick and timber have gone. There are also traces of huge cisterns, a fortress, a grain depository, stables and a beautifully reconscructed Byzantine wall. We share the top of the Tell with a shepherd and his flock, and a Bedouin camp fenced with thorn bush. Although we didn’t see them, there are rich Bronze Age tombs on the slopes of Tell Husn, one of which had the skeleton of a servant at the door, legs bound by a huge bronze shackle: the other earlier one yielded over 2 000 objects ranging from gold earrings and copper bracelets to pottery and alabaster vessels.

At midday, the sense of ancient peace is disturbed by the roar of Israeli planes making a very loud statement overhead.

When we descend Tell Husn we look around the Roman Ruins in Wadi Jirm. The odeon is paved with red and white stones. With the arrival of Islam, missing paving was replaced by pieces of altar screen, sometimes made into a careful pattern, sometimes just a torn corner. A mosaic floor has been backfilled to preserve it.

Earthquakes feature in the history of this site. Once, two people were carrying lamps. The material of their clothes fused with their skin leaving traces of silk, undoing theories that these were the dwellings of poor people. Skeletons were also found with gold coins stitched into their clothing. There were signs of houses subdivided, as if times had got tougher, families larger.

When we return to the dig house we watch in the yard while the morning’s haul of pottery is sorted – handles, rims, bases, designs. Inside the pottery is divided into type by the dig director. The day’s finds are basketed according to material – flint, groundstone, ceramics, shell, and metal – ready to be assessed and catalogued and then redirected for cleaning, drawing, or photography.

Today I walked on 1000 years of human habitation and a million years of human activity. Information came in a deluge, and my chaotic notes reflect this. I’m not sure I’ve got any of it right.

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Postcards from the past: the Dead Cities, Syria

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Serjilla, Syria

 

January, 2001

We leave Afamia and head first through pleasant country towns, and then back into rocky country where the roads are fenced with stone walls and groves of olive trees are subtle against furrowed red soil. The Dead Cities are a mystery: no one is quite sure why they died, although there are certainly theories. I visit Serjilla, a feast of ruined buildings, tumbled grey stone, mossy rocks, vivid green grass and lacey stone fences. No sign at all of wild dogs slavering rabies, contrary to warnings. I ramble around enjoying sun, silence and solitude. There are not many people, just a group of archaeologists and then, suddenly, cresting a rise, one by one, a family, including a baby in a very damp nappy. The son, an adolescent male, orchestrates a photo session, full of self-confidence and cheek. He’s fascinated by my gold camera and manages to coax my carefully hoarded small coins into his possession.

The day isn’t over yet. We stomp around the mud of an olive grove near a tomb with a high-pitched roof, and visit a ruined church at Al Bara. As we drive back to Hama, the shafts of sunset illuminate the shrinking mountains. I give Abu Farouz £200 Syrian as a thank you and rush off to a juice stand, whose proprietor either wants to know how many children I have, or to give me babies.

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For background and current history see

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/jan/09/syria-dead-cities-byzantine-archaeology

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/serjilla

http://www.kuriositas.com/2013/08/the-dead-cities-of-syria-ancient.html

Postcards from the past: Krak des Chevaliers, Syria

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castles, Krak des Chevaliers, Syria

January, 2001

I travel from Hama to Krak des Chevaliers with an American working in Lebanon and Abu Farouz who drives us in a yellow Mercedes. This castle is supposed to be the epitome of castles and was Lawrence of Arania’s favourite. We pass through increasingly hilly country. Rich red-soil fields line the road, wrested from rocky terrain, out of which grows the assassin castle, Musayef, and the town that surrounds it. Out of a high patch of black-specked white rock spouts a multitude of TV aerials. So many castles are overlaid on Musayef I only have a faint memory of it.

After Musayef, the hillsides are terraced and we see the cross rather than the crescent. Olive and apple trees dot the hillside. On a narrow windy road through town we nearly bang into an old woman leading a cow out of the house. We approach Krak des Chevaliers, houses crawling up the hill towards it. Abu Farouz parks the Mercedes at the foot of a towering turret, and I have two hours to stretch the imagination into the past: soaring ceilings; arches leading into stables, men’s quarters, kitchens. Round turrets and square turrets. Arrow slits. Ramparts that the brave-with-heights can still walk along. Stone stairs worn away by centuries of feet, sometimes grown over with moss or grass. Spectacular views, down terracing into a valley, and then more valleys. I sit on a top step and eat a quarter of a grapefruit. Sitting again in the Knight’s Hall, I draw the attention of a would-be guide who wants to show me things: snow-covered mountains through arrow slits; hollows in the ground connected somehow to the storage of oil; a huge oven; dark corridors where guards used to pace. The prayer hall is very beautiful – arched ceilings, decorated doorways, a stone pulpit. I wonder how on earth the Crusaders and their cohorts kept warm in such grandeur.

While the driver and my fellow-passenger eat, I perch on a low wall at the base of the castle and watch little girls play elastics. They tell me their names and the Arabic words for thongs, boots and sneakers. A man about my age with one leg joins me companionably and shows me the pictures on coins. (It only occurs to me now there might have been a sub-text!)

Other images from the day? A donkey under a tottering burden of sticks. A woman emerging from the trees carrying a  load of firewood.  A boy pushing a tractor around a corner in the middle of a hillside town. A truckload of carrots heading into Hama. A Christian cemetery. Bandy-legged old women with walking sticks. A motorbike with a cargo of seven rolled up carpets. These are all morning images. The journey back to Hama is along a nondescript highway.

You’ll have to be satisfied by words this week: for some incomprehensible reason I don’t have any photos except the blurry one I’ve used. photos, There are spectacular images in some of the links below.

 Report on damage in 2014 here: 2015 here: 2016 here

Postcards from the past: the Azem Palace, Hama

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Azm Palace, Hama, Syria

January, 2001

On my first reconnaissance in Hama I come across an alley with balcony overhangs. Eventually I discover that the museum I am looking for in an old Ottoman house is near this alley. The outside is uninviting, almost grim, but when I push open the door and pass through the ticket office I am in a courtyard shaded by a magnolia, huge, twisted and glossy-leaved. A fountain is in the centre and in a domed muralled recess cushions and a table set for coffee. I hear the sound of water: the unobtrusive guard has switched on the fountain. 

Up bare stone stairs is another open courtyard, sunny this time. Down one side are three rooms, with figures going about their business. One is a kitchen with a slatted ceiling and huge woven mats of raffia on the wall. At mantelpiece height, fretwork tilts out from the wall. There are two women figurines, one grinding and one spinning. The other two rooms are richer, with intricately painted walls, ceilings and cupboards. The window recesses, high up, are arched and barred with a stonework design at the top of the arch. 

I clomp the vestiges of yesterday’s mud onto the marble floors as I cross the courtyard. Here the area is pillared and domed, each marble pillar with a different decorative base.  A flat ceiling is richly painted and carved, and so are casement shutters and the dome. When the guard sees me trying to photograph the ceiling he disappears and comes back with a wooden door which he places on the floor, and indicates that I should lie on it to photograph.

Downstairs again, I come across the hammam: couches and cylindrical openings in the domed roof to let in the light. Modern-looking cupboards are full of modern-looking hammam wear.

I leave, delighted with the treasures hidden behind an unprepossessing door. 

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For more information have a look here. http://sana.sy/en/?p=68851

As far as I can tell this palace is undamaged.