Amman Citadel

The Amman Citadel (Arabic: القلعة, romanized: al-Qal'a, lit. 'the Fortress') on Citadel Hill (Arabic: جبل القلعة, romanized: Jabal al-Qal'a, lit. 'Fortress Mount') is an archaeological site on a hill towering over Downtown Amman, in the central part of the capital of Jordan. The L-shaped hill is one of the seven hills (sing. jebal, pl. jibāl^[2]) that originally made up Amman.

Amman Citadel

Arabic: القلعة, romanized: al-Qal'a, lit. 'the Fortress'
Citadel Hill, Amman
Alternative name	Citadel Hill (Jabal al-Qal'a), Citadel (Qal'a), acropolis[1]
Location	Amman
Coordinates	31.9547°N 35.9343°E / 31.9547; 35.9343
Type	settlement
History
Periods	Neolithic - Umayyad, Ayyubid
Cultures	Ammonite, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Ayyubid
Site notes
Condition	In ruins; made accessible to visitors
Public access	yes

Site map

The Citadel has a long history of occupation by several civilizations.^[3] Evidence of inhabitance since the Neolithic period has been found and the hill was fortified during the Bronze Age (1800 BCE). The hill became the capital of the Kingdom of Ammon, sometime after 1200 BCE. It later came under the sway of empires such as the Neo-Assyrian Empire (8th century BCE), Neo-Babylonian Empire (6th century BC), the successors of Alexander the Great' Macedonian Empire - the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of West Asia (3rd century BCE) -, Romans (1st century BCE), Byzantines (3rd century CE), and the new Muslim dynasties, among them the Umayyads (7th century CE).^[4] After the Umayyads came a period of decline and for much of the following millenium, the former city became an abandoned pile of ruins only sporadically used by Bedouins and seasonal farmers; this hiatus came to an end in 1878, when Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II resettled there Circassian refugees displaced by the Russian conquest of their homeland.^{[1][5] [6]} Despite this gap, the Citadel of Amman is considered to be among the world's oldest continuously inhabited places.^[7]

Most of the structures still visible at the site are from the Roman, Byzantine, and Umayyad periods.^[8] The major remains at the site are the Great Temple (inaccurately known as the Temple of Hercules), a Byzantine church, and the Umayyad Palace. The Jordan Archaeological Museum was built on the hill in 1951. Although fortification walls enclose the heart of the site, the ancient periods of occupation covered large areas. Historic structures, tombs, arches, walls, and stairs have no modern borders, and therefore there is considerable archaeological potential at this site, as well as in surrounding lands, and throughout Amman. Archaeologists have been working at the site since the 1920s, including Italian, British, French, Spanish, and Jordanian-led projects,^[9] but a great part of the Citadel remains unexcavated.

History

Excavations have uncovered signs of human occupation from as far back as the Middle Bronze Age (1650–1550 BCE) in the form of a tomb that held pottery and scarab seals.^[3] During the Iron Age, the Citadel was the site of the capital of the Ammonites, which was known as "Rabbah" or "Rabbath Ammon". The Amman Citadel Inscription comes from this period, and is considered to be the oldest known inscription in the Ammonite language, written in the Phoenician alphabet.^[10] From the Hellenistic period, there were not many architectural changes, but pottery provides evidence of occupation.^[3] The site became Roman around 30 BCE, and eventually came under Muslim rule in 661 CE.^[11] The Citadel declined in importance under Ayyubid rule in the 13th century, but a watchtower was added to the site during this period.^[12]

List of main structures

• The Roman Great Temple (popularly known as the Temple of Hercules)
• The Byzantine church (ESE of the Umayyad mosque)
• The Umayyad Palace, mosque, and water cistern
• The Ayyubid watchtower

Great Temple ("Temple of Hercules")

The uncompleted Roman Great Temple

The Great Temple of Roman Philadelphia, better but inaccurately known as the Temple of Hercules,^[13] is thought to be the most significant Roman structure within the Amman Citadel. According to an inscription, the temple was built when Geminius Marcianus was governor of the Province of Arabia (AD 161–166),^[13] in the same period as the Roman Theatre (still standing below Citadel Hill).

The Roman Theater and Odeon, the Hashemite Plaza and the downtown area seen from the hill

Venerated deity

One of the main excavators of the most recent and very thorough archaeological and reconstruction campaign from the 1990s, Greek archaeologist and classical architect C. Kanellopoulos, writes in one of the resulting official publications that the name Great Temple of Amman should be preferred, as the deity venerated there cannot be securely identified.^[14]

Three years before the publication of Kanellopoulos's book, fellow ACOR chief excavator K. W. Russell wrote in an ACOR newsletter about the discovery of a new fragment of the temple's architrave inscription, which together with fragments discovered in the past made possible a reasonably secure reconstruction of the entire inscription.^[15] The reconstruction, produced by Russell and Kanellopoulos, speaks of "this Herculean sanctuary and festival-place".^[15] Russell corroborates this information with an inscription found in 1905 in another area of Amman, which speaks of a certain city magistrate as "the constructor of the Heracleion", or temple of Hercules.^[15] This allowed the researchers to identify the Citadel Hill temple with reasonable confidence as being dedicated to Hercules.^[15]

Kanellopoulos, however, maintains some doubts, not least due to the fact that the colossal statue whose meager remains have been discovered near the temple, appears to depict a female deity (see below at Colossal statue). Philadelphia had, in Kanellopoulos's words, two "dominant gods", Herakles and Astarte - one male and one female.^[16] The excavation report published by Russell together with fellow archaeologists Anthi Koutsoukou, Mohammad Najjar, and Ahmed Momani in 1997, i.e. six years after the discovery of the additional inscribed architrave fragment, is still cautiously titled The Great Temple of Amman: The Excavations.^[13]

During the 1990s digs, possibly cultic features along with six votive figurines were discovered underneath the Roman temple area, which might indicate that the site had been used for religious purposes during the Iron Age.^[17][18] It has also been noted that Herakles/Hercules was the interpretatio graeca of the Semitic god Melqart of the Tyreans, the better known Herakles-Melqart cult allowing to extrapolate on a similar synchretism between Herakles and Milkom, the supreme god of the Ammonites, still worshipped in Roman times in Ammonitis.^[19] A Milkom inscription dating to the Iron Age was found on Citadel Hill, allowing for justified speculations on a succession of local cults, progressing from Milkom to Herakles.^[20]

Description

A model of how the temple was supposed to look once completed.

The temple stood on a podium 43 by 27 m (141 by 88 ft).^[13] The temple measured about 30 by 24 m (98 by 79 ft), with an additional outer sanctum of 121 by 72 m (397 by 236 ft).^{[citation needed]} The portico at the front of the temple had six columns c. 13.5 m (45 ft) tall, but there were no columns standing along the sides of the temple, as was the case with some other Roman temples.^[13] Some archaeologists^[who?] interpret the lack of remains of any additional columns as an indication that the temple was probably not finished, and believe the leftover marble was used to build the Byzantine church nearby.^{[citation needed]} The remains of the building and of the statue found near it offer reason to believe that the Amman temple was comparable in size with many of those in ancient Rome.^[13]

Colossal statue

The site also contains marble fragments of a colossal,^[13] partly stone-made statue,^{[citation needed]} estimated to have been around 13 m (42 ft) tall.^[21] All that remains are three fingers and an elbow.^[16] The statue was probably destroyed in an earthquake.^{[citation needed]}

Who was the statue depicting? Some identify it as as representing Hercules,^[13] but C. Kanellopoulos writes that while the hand fragment (three fingers) and the elbow fragment look in every respect as being part of the same statue, the muscular structure around the elbow excludes the statue from depicting Herakles (the Greek iteration of Hercules),^[16] and the slender fingers and the fingernails look feminine.^[21] He reconstructs the statue as depicting a woman, most likely a female goddess, with the right hand raised and the left one relaxed, in a pose known from certain depictions of Athena.^[21] He notes that there were three female deity worshipped in Philadelphia: Athena, Astarte and Demetra, adding a fourth option, Tyche, who is depicted on local coinage in the style of Athena Hephaisteia^[21] (an Athenian iteration of the goddess associated with the Temple of Hephaestus, famously depicted by Alcamenes). Kanellopoulos describes Herakles and Astarte as being Philadelphia's "dominant gods".^[16]

Ayyubid tower

Main article: Ayyubid Watchtower (Amman)

Byzantine church

Umayyad palace complex

Umayyad palace

Reconstructed gatehouse of the Umayyad Palace

During the Umayyad period (AD 661–750), a palace structure, known in Arabic as al-Qasr (القصر), was built at the Citadel between 724 and 743 AD.^[22] The complex, which is counted among the so-called Umayyad qusur (plural of qasr, 'castle' or 'palace') or "desert castles", was probably used as an administrative building or the residence of an Umayyad official. The palace draws on Byzantine architectural patterns. For example, the entrance hall is built in the shape of a Greek cross. The palace may have been built on top of an existing Byzantine structure in this shape.^[23]

Umayyad mosque

Reconstructed eastern gate of the Umayyad mosque

The Umayyad mosque is an example of early mosques that imitated the Persian-style apadana hall, characterized by a "forest of columns"; these mosques are normally found only in Persia and Mesopotamia (Iraq).^[24]

Umayyad cistern

There is a huge water reservoir dug into the ground adjacent to the palace.^{[citation needed]}

Jordan Archaeological Museum

Collection of Roman sculptures on display at the Jordan Archaeological Museum

The Amman Citadel is also the site of the Jordan Archaeological Museum, the former national archaeological museum established in 1951, which is home to an exquisite collection of artifacts from all the significant periods and regions of the country known at the time and discovered in the following decades, including the Citadel. Its prominent role has been somewhat diminished since the inauguration of the new national museum in 2014, the Jordan Museum, to which some of the artifacts previously displayed at the Citadel Hill venue have been moved.^{[citation needed]}

Tourism

Starting in 1995–96, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities of Jordan in partnership with American (USAID) and Spanish institutions (AECID and CSIC) began several projects to conserve and restore this site to benefit tourists and the local community.^[9][25]

Gallery

• 
  Hercules Temple
• 
  Hercules Temple
• 
  Ruins of the palace with reconstructed gatehouse