Gerasa, better known as Jerash, the name of the modern town on the site, is of great interest for the good preservation of its Roman buildings, and especially for its city plan. The city plan follows for the most part a standard grid, but includes fascinating eccentricities, the result, it seems, of survivals from pre-Roman settlement and from topographic irregularities. Jerash lies 48km north of Amman (ancient Philadelphia), the capital ofJordan. The ancient city was established in the Hellenistic period, possibly by the Seulecid king Antiochos IV Epiphanes (175—164 BC), as a town named Antioch on the Chrysorhoas (the Golden River). Briefly a possession of the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom, in 63 BC the town passed to the Romans, and was assigned by Pompey to the Decapolis, a group of ten cities in the Jordan River valley and vicinity. Hadrian visited in 130. The city was medium sized, ca. 100ha enclosed within walls erected in the second half of the first
Century AD. The Chrysorhoas River runs north-south in a valley right through the middle of the city; ancient Jerash was built on both sides, on ground sloping down toward the river. By the early second century, the population may have been 10,000-15,000.
From the mid-third to the late fourth centuries the city declined. It later became an important Christian center, and prospered from agriculture, mining, and caravan trade until it was captured by Sassanian Persians (614) and Arabs (635) and then abandoned. A modern village was established on the eastern half of the ancient city in 1878 by Circassian refugees. The ancient city came to the attention of western Europe from the early nineteenth century, thanks to travelers; surface exploration intensified in the later nineteenth century, with soundings and clearing of ruins in the twentieth century. Yale University, in collaboration first with the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, then with the American School in Jerusalem, conducted excavations here from 1928 to 1934.
Because of the absence until modern times of nearby settlement with an appetite for reusing ancient building materials, the architecture ofJerash has survived relatively well. The architecture is a rich, successful blend of Hellenistic and Roman imperial styles. Also grand is the urban layout, with its breathtaking irregular oval plaza and the magnificent cardo, the north-south street lined with colonnades (Figure 24.12). The visible remains are primarily Roman, mostly streets and public buildings. Few private or domestic remains have been excavated.
The city was heralded on the south by a large triumphal arch probably built to commemorate Hadrian’s visit in 128—129. It is 37.5m wide, has three arched passageways with an additional arch design at either side. The stadium or hippodrome lies just to the north. One then reaches the main south gate and the city walls. The main gates were at the north and the south, leading to the main intercity road from Petra north to Bosra and Damascus. They do not quite align. From the south gate one proceeds obliquely to the Oval Forum (Figure 24.13). This plaza, irregular in shape and slightly sloping toward the south, measures ca. 66m x 99m. Its stone paving is arranged in concentric rows. It is framed by Ionic colonnades on two sides. The third of its three curving sides, the south-west, is occupied by a hill with, on a high podium, a Temple of Zeus, from the early first century but finished in the 160s. This temple is Romano-Syrian in type, with emphasis on the front and the imposing staircase that led up to it. The single high-ceilinged cella was surrounded by a peristyle of unfluted columns, 8 x 12. Its cella wall has scalloped niches on the exterior, broad pilasters on the interior. Below the temple lies a broad terrace with a large altar; the terrace is supported by a series of vaulted chambers. Adjacent to the temple, indeed sharing the same hillside, is the South Theater, originally from the first century, with an elaborate stage building, or scaenae frons.
The Oval Forum is one of those brilliant created spaces that overwhelms and disorients, like Bernini’s baroque St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican City. The plaza serves as a point of juncture, for the cardo then changes direction slightly and heads straight now toward the north gate. From this point on the city is laid out in an orthogonal grid plan, apparently early imperial in date. It is believed that the contrasting orientation between the south gate and the oval plaza reflects an earlier urban plan. At two major street intersections the cardo is marked by a tetrapylon, the southernmost set in a circular space, with tabernae round about. This marking of the cardo is unusual and dramatic, and gives visual emphasis to one’s walk through the city.
The major Roman building in the center of the city is the Temple of Artemis, built in the second century. The richly decorated temple, 6 x 11 columns, is in the Corinthian order and measures 52.5m in length. It sits toward the rear of a porticoed platform 121m x 161m, dramatically positioned at the top of a broad flight of steps rising up the west slope of the city’s hill from the cardo. The entrance porch of the temple is deep, an element that emphasizes the front, a design feature in the classic Tuscan-Roman manner.
Two bath complexes lie east of the cardo. The northernmost has a large, well-preserved room roofed by a true pendentive dome made of stone. Across the cardo to the west lies the north theater, with a rectangular plaza to its north side. A third, smaller theater lies to the north outside the city wall.
The final curiosity in the city plan of Jerash occurs in the north gate, built in 115: the gate is wedge-shaped in ground plan. The road from the northern city of Pella does not meet the cardo ofJerash on axis; instead, it comes in at an angle of 18° on the north-west. With its wedge-shape, the north gate is able to face squarely both the Pella road (on the north) and the city’s cardo (on the south). Buildings with this function of masking a change in direction are seen elsewhere in the Roman east. An elaborate example is the Monumental Arch at Palmyra, which marks a change of 30° in the orientation of the central Colonnaded Street.
World History
