Jordan Archives - Page 36 of 38

Shobak Castle To Become Tourist Destination

Most who see this Crusader castle do so only from a distance on their way to Petra. Plans are underway to attract tourists to stop and shop. From the Jordan Times:

European experts and local officials are looking to develop the southern city of Shobak into an emerging tourism destination.
The project, led by the University of Florence in association with the Shobak Municipality and the EU, aims to take advantage of the historical value and natural beauty of the southern town in order to bolster local development, according to organisers.
Situated on the road to the rose-red city of Petra, Shobak is best known for its Crusader castle, once part of a chain of fortresses stretching across Jordan.
However, the castle and town’s Ottoman-era homes are often overlooked by tour groups who shuttle in and out of Wadi Musa to see Petra a few miles away.
Michele Nucciotti, an archaeologist from the University of Florence, which has been working on developing the archaeology of the town over the last several years, said the project aims to introduce the area to tourists.
“Shobak has a tourist and historical value that has been overlooked. Our job is to develop the city and prepare it for the prominence it deserves,” he said, referring to Shobak Castle as one of the best preserved existing crusader castles.
As part of the project, officials will work to enhance facilities in the castle to enable it to accommodate larger numbers of tourists. Restoration experts will also work to renovate Ottoman and Mamluk buildings in the town for some to be converted into small-scale tourism businesses, he added.
[…]
Originally known as Montreal, Shobak Castle was built in the early 12th century by Baldwin I of Jerusalem as a Crusader stronghold of what was then considered “Arabia”, standing at the ancient crossroads between the Gulf of Aqaba, Damascus and Mecca.
After succumbing to a two-year siege by armies led by Salah Addin in 1189, the castle fell into disrepair before being taken over and renovated by the Mamluks in the 14th century.

The full story is here.

Shobak Crusader Castle from east

Tagged Jordan, Tourism

Discoveries at Khirbet al-Mudayna, possible Jahaz

Excavations at Khirbet al-Mudayna (Medeiniyeh) have been slowly and steadily peeling back the history of this large site on the southern side of the Medeba Plateau in Jordan. Some have suggested that the site be identified with Jahaz, the scene of the encounter between the Israelites under Moses and Sihon the Amorite (Num 21:23; Deut 2:32; cf. Judg 11:20; Isa 15:4; Jer 48:34). From Exchange Magazine:

For two decades, Laurier archaeology professor Michèle Daviau has led international teams of scholars and students abroad to uncover the hidden lives of people who existed thousands of years ago.
During her most recent excavation in Jordan, Daviau was astounded by the discovery of a limestone statue and several high-status objects that appear to have been imported from outside the region.
The objects were made from a variety of materials: three small black ware vessels, one with an incised design of triangles, two faience cosmetic containers, two faience bottles, one calcite cosmetic vessel, two alabaster vessels, one fine-grain basalt bowl and a steatite cosmetic mortar were discovered in an ancient house dating back to about 600 BC.
The objects were in the same room as a 40-centimetres statue of a male with red paint preserved on his left leg and his hands. Such finds have no parallels in Jordan although their source may be Egypt or Phoenicia, said Daviau.
“The alabaster and faience objects suggest influence from the two superpowers in the region, Egypt and Assyria, but the dynamics whereby these objects arrived at the site are a mystery,” she said. “They may reflect a period of about 30 or 40 years when Egypt controlled this area.”
The principal sites under excavation by Daviau in the Wadi ath-Thamad area are Khirbat al-Mudayna and the Roman fortress of Zuna. The former is a walled Iron Age town (1,000 to 600 BC) situated on a hill with the Nabataean/early-Roman period settlement (100 BC to 150 AD) at the hill’s base. More than 150 sites that date from the Lower Paleolithic to the Ottoman period have been located in the dig’s 10- by 11-kilometre survey area.

The story continues here. You can read more about the site at BAS’s Find a Dig, learn more about the archaeologist on her university profile page, or check out the Facebook group.

HT: Joe Lauer

Khirbet al-Mudayna on the Wadi ath-Thamad

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Jordan

The Kazneh of Petra in the 1940s

The impressive “Treasury” is the first building to greet visitors walking through the Siq. Tucked away from the most direct effects of wind and rain, the Nabatean tomb monument has been well preserved for the last two thousand years.

Date of photograph: between 1940 and 1946

Since that time, the site has been developed and restorations have been made. The Treasury became well-known in Western culture with the release of the third Indiana Jones movie in 1989.

The first Westerner to visit Petra in modern times was Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. Before his visit, he converted to Islam and spent several years living in Syria learning the language. He was only able to enter the site by feigning desire to sacrifice at Aaron’s tomb (1812). He died only a few years later (1817), but his writings were published posthumously (1822). Travels in Syria and the Holy Land describes his visit to Petra and how he hid his notes by sewing them into his clothes. The book is now available for free download at Google Books. A reprint is $40 at Amazon.

The top photo is one of more than 100 photos of Petra included in the Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection (Library of Congress, LC-matpc-04477).

Tagged American Colony Photos, Jordan

Ataroth Temple Follow-up

The reports last week on the Iron Age temple discovered at Ataroth (Ataruz) did not include comments from the American director who has overseen work on the site for the last decade. A story in the university’s denomination’s news network gives some more information (and one photo of the temple).

“[This is] the largest and best-preserved temple from the biblical period. It will shed important light on the cultic, or religious, life of that period,” said Dr. Chang Ho Ji, chairman and professor in the Counseling and School Psychology department and a collaborating faculty in the History department of La Sierra University, a Seventh-day Adventist school in Riverside, California.
[…]
“This is an extremely important find and one that has relationships to biblical history; it is very exciting,” said Dr. Lawrence Geraty, president emeritus of the school and an archaeology professor there, in an e-mail to Adventist Review. Geraty pioneered the cooperation among several Adventist institutions, including Atlantic Union College, Canadian Union College, Andrews University, and La Sierra, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, starting in 1984 with a dig at Tall al-‘Umayri.
Jordanian Department of Antiquities (DoA) Director General Ziad Saad announced the recent discovery as the largest early Iron Age II temple in the region, dating back to between 1000 and 800 BC.
The multi-chambered temple, which includes a 20-by-20-meter courtyard, yielded over 300 cultic artifacts, leading experts to believe it was once a political and religious base for either the Moabite or the northern Israelite kingdom.

The full report is here. Previous notices on this blog can be found here and here. Joe Lauer notes a similar story in the Jordan Times.

Tagged Discoveries, Jordan

Ataroth in the Bible

Following yesterday’s post on the discovery of the Moabite temple at Ataroth, I thought it might be helpful to note the biblical significance of this site. It’s not a very well-known place, but I was
surprised just how much we know from the Bible and extrabiblical sources.

In the time of Moses, Ataroth was one of the cities requested by the tribes of Reuben and Gad following the conquest of the land of Sihon the Amorite (Num 32:3). You may recall that at first Moses was upset with this request, thinking that they were afraid to enter the Promised Land with its formidable enemies (as was the previous generation). But after some clarification, Moses granted their request and the Gadites fortified the city (Num 32:34).

The presence of the Gadites at Ataroth is confirmed in the Moabite Stone about 550 years later. King Mesha claims to have conquered the city: “Now the men of Gad had always dwelt in the land of Ataroth, and the king of Israel had built Ataroth for them; but I fought against the town and took it and slew all the people of the town as a satiation (intoxication) for Chemosh and Moab” (ANET 320).

Mesha ruled in the middle of the 9th century, so unless King Uzziah of Judah regained the land, the area around Ataroth may have remained Moabite for several centuries. Perhaps the recently discovered temple was built in the aftermath of Mesha’s conquest.

An obscure note in the genealogies of 1 Chronicles may indicate that the Gadites had moved further north by the 8th century (1 Chr 5:17).

Scholarly consensus locates biblical Ataroth at Khirbet Attarus/Ataruz. There is also a Rujm Attarus and a Jebel Attarus. Khirbet Attarus is located 8 miles (14 km) northwest of Dhiban on the west slope of Jebel Attarus. MacDonald gives a list of more than a dozen scholars who agree on this identification (“East of the Jordan,” 113).

Ataroth is east of the Dead Sea and north of the Nahal Arnon, which constituted Moab’s northern border (map from biblos.com)

MacDonald writes, “Khirbat ‘Atarus is a good example for the location of biblical Ataroth, agreeing with both biblical information and the Mesha Inscription. The preservation of the biblical name at the site and archaeological remains from the Iron Age are also evidence for this choice” (114).

MacDonald’s excellent work is available, along with other ASOR titles, in restricted pdf format from Boston University’s website. (Only viewing is allowed.)

For more on the Hadad figurine discovered in the temple, see Ferrell Jenkins’s post.

Tagged Jordan

Temple Discovered in Ataroth, Jordan

It was just another roadside stop on my quest to find and photograph every biblical site known in the country of Jordan. While most tourists, even those biblically oriented, don’t visit much more than Petra, Jerash (Gerasa), and Mount Nebo, there are dozens of other sites in Jordan mentioned in the
Old Testament. I was at one of these when my traveling partner decided he had seen enough piles of rocks and was going to wait in the car.

This site, however, was more than a pile of rocks. Recent excavations had revealed some walls, floors, and a cave. As I made a circuit around the site, I had the distinct impression that I was looking at a temple. I cannot recall now all the features that led me to this conclusion, but by the time I returned to the car I was absolutely convinced that I had “discovered” a temple at biblical Ataroth (modern Attarus or Ataroz).

Some later research revealed that excavators from LaSierra University believed they were working on an Iron Age temple. The natural question for me was whether this was a Moabite temple or an Israelite temple. I was not privy to the details, and these could be ambiguous in any case (faithless Israelites do not look very different from their neighbors). Biblically we know that this area, the Medeba Plateau, shifted hands several times between the Israelites and their cousins. Perhaps you recall Jephthah’s declaration that this land belonged to Israel for 300 years (Judges 11:26). At the time he was contesting Ammonite control, but at other times it was the Moabites who were trying to expand into the land that Israel conquered under Moses (Numbers 21:21-35).

Yesterday news of the temple discovery was published by the Associated Press (HT: Joe Lauer). The story notes that about 300 vessels and deity figurines were uncovered, most in the last few months. It also attributes the temple to the Moabites. Such a designation does not surprise me for two reasons.

First, the Moabites probably controlled this area more than the Israelites did. Second, there are political reasons for not associating ancient Israelites with the country of Jordan. But if you’re thinking that the Israelites would never have a temple outside of Jerusalem, then you haven’t read your Bible very well. The Israelites had shrines all over the place. Even Solomon built a high place to the Moabite god for his Moabite wife (1 Kings 11:7).

The AP article has only two photos about the discovery, both showing artifacts. Below are two images of the temple itself, both taken six years ago. Apparently it was the recent discovery of the figurines that led to the press conference only now announcing the temple.

Iron Age temple at Ataroth

“Holy of holies” of Iron Age temple

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Jordan, Travels