Photos by Peter Steele (RAS delegate)
Jerash is a city in Jordan, north of the capital Amman. Inhabited since the Bronze Age, it’s known for the ruins of the walled Greco-Roman settlement of Gerasa just outside the modern city. These include the 2nd-century Hadrian’s Arch, the Corinthian columns of the Temple of Artemis and the huge Forum’s oval colonnade. The Jerash Archaeological Museum displays artifacts excavated from the site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerash
Thanks Peter, an excellent reminder of what a “bog standard” Roman city looked like.
I recently saw a photo of the site taken in 1911, no modern city then disfigured the site!
The Nymphaeum you show the in the penultimate row must have been a magnificent sight when working. Fresh water on tap on an epic scale.
Wasn’t Jerash one of the Decapolis, a sort of classical cultural union of 10 cities, in an otherwise antipathetic Semitic landscape?
I remember doing a module on Jerash (Gerasa) as part of my undergraduate degree. Still have the notes somewhere, I shall have to look over them. Peter’s photos here look amazing, and to answer Mark’s question as best as I can based on a hazy memory of the university module; yes Jerash was part of the Decapolis along with, I think, Pella and Damascus and possibly Amman (known as Philadephia)? I can’t recall the other seven cities though strangely I do remember that Palmyra was not one of them.
For a thorough introduction to the area- suggest ‘Gerasa and the Decapolis’ by David Kennedy in the ‘Duckworth Debates in Archaeology’ series. ISBN 9780715635674