Jerash - as stunning as Petra

 

I have tried to get this as a BIG Header Picture, but am stuck with a mini one. Ah well, it will have to do for the moment.  This was the most IMMENSE site.  I was thinking at the start 60 acres or so but the further we walked and the site stretched out - more than half of it not excavated, it was clear it was about 200 acres of archaeology. Just AMAZING.   It was also known as Antioch, a name I recognized but knew very little about.  It was a Graeko-Roman city, originally known as Gerasa, and then Antioch on the Golden River.  Sadly in 749 there was a massive earthquake, which destroyed much of the city.  Earliest archaeology there dates from the Neolithic.

Sadly, I took SO many photographs, but they have not all loaded from either camera or phone.  I will have to wait until Tam is here and can help me.  There were videos too of the site, and of the chap playing the Bagpipes, accompanied by another on a drum. Then they got a chap to start dancing and we all joined in - imagine a take on Zorba the Greek performed by our motley crew!!! It was SUCH fun!  Gabby has the 100s taken by our tour guide but not loaded them on my computer yet (I fear no room!)

We were first taken to the chariot racing arena - quite small and not on the scale of the Circus Maximus in Rome. The horses they used must have been pony sized as it was a very tight turn either end.  I didn't take photos. Above is a complete circle of the Forum's colonnade. I did do a video but can't find it . . .

Greek inscriptions from the city strongly suggest that Jerash was founded by Alexander the Great and his general Perdiccas, who settled Macedonian soldiers there in 331 BC.  Keith always said that if you went into Northern Turkey - or anywhere that Alexander the Great had been, you would see locals with grey eyes, and I have to say that many of the men we encountered around here (and elsewhere in Jordan) had amazing eyes - grey, grey/green, hazel. 

This was the theatre where we danced to the bagpipes (which our tour guide insisted had been invented by the Jordanians).  We entered it up steps and then you could sit on the upper terraces.  However, there was a drop of about 12 feet to the next row down!  

Oh look, another mosaic!

Above, I think this was the temple to Artemis, but I couldn't get a good photo as there were people swarming over it.  We had been shown a temple to Zeus too, but he clearly wasn't as important as the Greek Goddess Artemis.  She was the Goddess of the hunt and wild animals and the wilderness, of childbirth, and also of the moon.  Zeus was the God of thunder and lightening and the sky, and of law and order.  His temple was half the size of the one to Artemis.  There was a long haired cat . . .

I took lots of photos of broken sculptures, intending to draw them on my return.  WHERE is the time (and where are most of the photos?)

These must all be off my phone, as they are not very clear.

Wasn't this just amazing?  Our guide showed us how the pillars were designed to have a little give in them and when a blade was inserted, would move!

Of course, one of the site cats - rather pregnant too!

HERE is a short video about the site, worth looking up some others too.  I was watching one earlier with a really local guide and he knew SO much.   It truly was such an amazing place.