Salalah ~ Muscat ~ Amman, Jordan, July 4-6th

Welcome to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. We arrive on a cool clear evening, Saturday the 4th of July. After the heat of Muscat and the humidity of Salalah the temps in Amman are a welcome relief, highs in the low 80s, lows in 60s. The landscape is as changed as the temperature. Jordan is a mostly arid land, short on water, and 1/3 the size of Oman. The Kingdom (a Constitutional Monarchy) has approximately 7 million people, 2 million living in Amman a busy urban area with lots of traffic. In contrast to Oman there is also more security in evidence.

Sunday morning we resume our Arabic lessons at the AMIDEAST Amman Office. Our Jordanian instructor (photo) expands our Omani conversation lessons by writing in Arabic (left to right), western script, then giving us the English words orally. With little time to study I am struggling, but I am a willing participants and hope to at least be able to talk to taxi drivers and engage in polite greetings. A welcome orientation with Barbara Al Nouri, Country Director, brings us up-to-date on our Jordanian program. After lunch we load into two Hyundai black vans for a city tour.

Modern Amman is built on a site first inhabited around 3500 BCE. Here, in the 3rd century BCE, the Egyptian Ptolemies built a city and named it Philadelphus. The landscape, strategically dominated by twelve hills had a reliable water source, making the site selection understandable. During the 1st century CE Rome rebuilt the site as one of the ten Imperial Decapolis cities naming it Philadelphia. Our first stop in the city center is the restored Roman Theatre, one of the largest in Imperial Rome. Seating 6,000 spectators, it is used for summer entertainments and has two companion museums, one for folklore the other featuring popular traditions. Along the north wall entrance the remains of columns mark the Forum area.

The Citadel, a site occupied from the Bronze and Iron Age then successively rebuilt during Roman, Byzantine, and Umayyad periods, commands the highest point in Amman. The remaining columns of the 1st century CE Roman temple dominate the city skyline. After the obligatory group photo, we navigate our way around trenches and heavy equipment working to create better access to the large site in order to visit the National Archaeological Museum adjacent to the temple complex. Here some of the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls (copper rolls and papyrus fragments) are displayed as well as statues, busts, pottery, glass, and jewelry waiting to eventually be transferred to the New National Museum under construction. Another Citadel project under Getty foundation support is the partially-restored reception hall of the Umayyad-era palace located in another section (photo).

Back into the vans we drive through Abdoun for a windshield tour past the American Embassy. When the Embassy first relocated in Abdoun there was nothing else in the area we are told. Today it is filled with palatial villas built by wealthy Iraqi and other foreigners after the first Gulf War. Heavily armed Jordanians secure the Embassy exterior walls and U.S. Marines guard the interior. Large signs read NO PHOTOS allowed. The ambassador’s resident is inside the compound. The walls and gates recall a chapter in Thomas Friedman’s book HOT, FLAT AND CROWDED, “Where Birds Don’t Fly,” recounting the new American Embassy in Istanbul and the need to be both secure against hostile intruders while maintaining the United States mission to the host country. In the post-911 world, American Embassy officials and their families as well as other Americans living and working in Amman must navigate between advancing American interests, enhancing relations with the Arab world, and the requirement to secure the environment that makes normal relations possible. As Director Al Al Nouri noted during our orientation, 9/11 changed everything creating categories of “what we did before and what we did after.” Life goes on, as illustrated by the over 500 guests attending the 4th of July celebration on Embassy grounds.

In the evening we have a formal multiple course dinner featuring Jordanian food on the roof garden of the Crown Plaza Hotel. Hotel entry is controlled – steel stanchions protect the parking lot and entrance. July is also the wedding month and many guests were entering the hotel for a wedding – as with airport security all personal belongings are passed through electronic sensors, men and women enter separate lines where they are “patted down.” Since the attack in 2005 these procedures are a part of life in Amman.

Monday following Arabic we drive to the American Center for Oriental Research (ACOR founded 1968). Director Barbara Porter (photo) greets us. ACOR hosts visiting scholars, facilitates research, and engages in archaeological work, among many other things. We learn that the Roman Citadel site was an ACOR project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Their work follows the Venice Charter - restore only 10% of an excavated site. For example, the two lower drums on the columns of what is thought to be a Temple to Hercules (site photo & ACOR model), represent this commitment. Barbara tells us the site was mostly “robbed out” prior to the 746-747 CE earthquake.

Another recent ACOR/USAID project (1992) is the 450-600 CE Church site at Petra. Fine glass, pottery (Top photo - I am holding a restored bowl found on site), and priceless carbonized manuscripts are being meticulously restored in the ACOR lab (see photo – look like lumps of coal). The papyri have a range with actual date of 535 to 595 CE. We will see the church site while at Petra in two weeks.

We have also had classroom lectures followed by Q & A, on the Hashemites, the Structure of Jordanian Government, Jordan’s relations in the Middle East, Islam, and Women in Islam-Facts and Misconceptions.