Corrigenda ARSC

Various members of the Social Club have asked for the record to be straightened, so it is true that Rose and I appointed people to offices. However, Dino, Anya, Carrie, Mouna and Matt chose their own titles, with, I think it is reasonable to say, considerable flair.
I also neglected to illustrate an important, although short-term resident, Dr Peter Edwell, normally a lecturer at Macquarie University, but when in Amman, The Country Member:


This is a shot of Pete hugging the Roman fort of Qasr Bsheir. I'll blog on this later too, but while it isn't that common for grown men to go around hugging forts, I'm sure you'll understand when I tell you that Pete wrote his doctoral thesis on the Roman army in the east, and he's an ancient historian. Historians spend a lot of time in libraries, and archaeologists are always telling them they need to get out more. The modern ones do, like Peter, and it's pretty exciting for them.

OK. So we're a bunch of nerds. Nerdy, and proud. And emotional around forts.

ACOR Residents' Social Club

At the risk of sounding pretentious, I unilaterally declared myself the President of the newly formed, unconsitutional, completely unrepresentative, and pretty silly, ACOR Residents' Social Club. Rose offered to be Secretary, due to her several year's experience in administration. We then inducted other residents into the Club, allowing everyone to choose their own office.

Since both Rose and I will shortly be moving out of ACOR - she has a flat in Shmeisani, and will probably be there for months, as she has an offer with the ICMC working with Iraqi refugees, and I'll be moving around the corner to Bateel Serviced Apartments with the family when we get back from Damascus, before heading to Pella, I thought I should place on record the office holders of the ARSC (there is no Treasurer as we are an egalitarian outfit, each paying her or his own way):

Graciously agreeing to be our Patron, Dr Barbara Porter, Director, ACOR

Rose Espinola (MA student, International Law, University of Sydney) - Secretary

Brennan Roorda (West Point, (yes, that West Point) & Rotary Scholar) - Logistics Officer

Bill Zimmerle (PhD student, Archaeology, Uni Penn) - Thesis Infrastructure Officer
{currently enduring hardship in storerooms in Paris, Berlin or London, searching for incense burners}

Jo Verduci (PhD student, Archaeology, Uni Melbourne) - Events & Hospitality Manager

Anya Vodopyanov (Phd student, political/social science, Harvard) - Princess Royal

Konstantinos Politis (Director, Hellenic Society for Near Eastern Studies) -
External Relations
{and I'm really sorry, Dino, for this photo because everyone knows that Dino is a serious guy, who never normally jokes around}

Mouna Goode (PhD student, Early Islamic economic history, Uni Victoria) - Social Critic

and our newest members:

'Asam Adel al-Sabeh (PhD student Organic chemistry, Mosul University) - Iraqi Liaison Officer

Matt Gasperetti (PhD student Archaeology/Paleoanthropology, Cambridge Univesity, UK) -
Health and Safety Officer

And having left, but still in our hearts

Carrie Swan (PhD student, Archaeology, Brown University) - Member at Large

December in Amman

Well, I'm so behind with my blogging that I'm abandoning chronology as an organizing principle, and going for stream of consciousness. The last few days we've had very cold howling winds, bringing most of the dirt of Wadi Rum into my room - and my lungs. I snapped these shots on Saturday as I was going to the wonderful Dr Yang for my regular massage and acupuncture treatment. The sky looked like yellow fog from the dust.





Last night the rain and wind was so bad I put down the metal shutters on my window to try and keep the cold gusts out. This morning when I pulled up my shutters I saw, to my considerable delight:


View from my window


Me outside the Byzantine farmhouse across from ACOR (thank you Mr Guard for taking the photo)


Acor Terrace


This is how you write my name in Arabic


Brennan and Rose's snowman - but it has already started to go sludgy, so you can see the Rejal al-Thuraj (snow man in arabic) has lost his carrot arm.


View from the other side of ACOR, with locals playing in the snow

Baalbek part 2

I can't seem to work out how to arrange my text with my pictures, so please bear with me. Although I only had a short time at Baalbek, and mainly shot technical pictures, I think my last post didn't really do justice to the joint, so here are more photos, hopefully with captions in the right place:








This is Carrie Swan, taller than me, measuring a column drum on its side, as mentioned before. I of course didn't have the wit to ask anyone to photograph me, or the lack of inhibitions that Carrie clearly has to do things like this!









One of the German work places - this is the only section of open ground near the sanctuary that wasn't cleared in the 60s by the Department of Antiquities. It has important mediaeval material.








Under the main sanctuary are these tunnels - I'm not at all sure what they were used for in the Roman period, but now they make a nice setting for the small museum







In the sacred area, next to the massive temple of Jupiter, is the "little guy" called the Temple of Bacchus, although we have no idea which deity was worshipped there. For the really keen, in the background is a hill with an army camp on it, and to the left of the army camp, on the ridge of the hill is where there was another temple, probably to Mercury, now almost entirely obliterated.






That doorway to Bacchus which was in the last post, this is what it looks like if you are incredibly brave, like me, and stand directly under it for about 3.5 nanoseconds to get a shot of Mercury on the right, and Jupiter as an eagle in the middle, on the bottom of the key stone which is only held in by Mr Kalayan's concrete.







You have to imagine this interior with gilt, marble veneer, painted statues, more gold, lavish textiles, and in the dark because there was a roof. The phrase "over the top" did not exist in Latin I think. This is one of the most elaborate interiors of any Roman period temple. The white plaques in the middle up the top were expressions of mutual admiration exchanged by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamad II and Kaiser Wilhelm II. After WWI, the British controllers took them down (but didn't smash them, just put them in the bottom drawer) and they were refound recently and put back up by the German Ambassador to Lebanon.



This detail is of part of Dionysiac/Bacchic procession - serious partying back then, maenads drunk on specially fermented mead, Pans and satyrs jumping about ravishing anyone who stood still, the god off his face on a panther, where would we be, I wonder, if the worship of Dionysos had won the battle against Christianity - it was a close thing there in the 2nd century AD, let me tell you. Anyway, back at Baalbek, because this decorates the holy of holies, that's why people think it is a temple to Bacchus (who is Dionysos in Latin)





The urge to graffite knows no limits ....















Left overs:













OK - last temple I promise. The roundish thing with columns is called the Temple to Venus (but again we've no idea who was worshipped there) and later converted to a little chapel to St Barbara - I could tell you the story but the length of this post is getting ridiculous.














I did get about half an hour to walk around the town, so spent most of that heading north to find the remnents of the city wall built into houses, and ran into more Germans measuring the north gate of the city. On the way back, I peeped over the wall of this delightful garden, with fantastic looking fruit trees, amazing trellises, little plots of herbs and small vegetables around the place, a lively family chatting away while gardening, a resigned donkey, and the best view of any kitchen garden in the world:

Baalbek

Don't tell anyone, but I've been teaching about Baalbek for years without ever going there. So I was very happy when Stephen Bourke said he is good friends with Bettina Fischer-Genz of the DAI, who lives in Beirut, and who was going with her team to Baalbek. We made contact and it turned out that the week I was planning to visit Pierre-Marie was also the best week to visit the Germans in Baalbek. Huzza! So, a quick overnight at the Hotel Sultan (no furniture bought since 1956, and the carpet is cheap nylon carpet squares, but it is clean and relatively cheap - $US40 per night for a single lady, incl tax and breakfast, easy to find, and staffed by extremely helpful guys), and off early in the morning to get a taxi collectif to Baalbek.
Actually, a taxi to, well, really I don't know. I was pounced on at the Samariyeh bus station again, so there was the standard scene of me trying to grab my bag back off of some toothless geezer who was attempting to put it into the boot of a car before I'd even discussed prices (less, as it turned out, than Zachariya of Bosra, or the Hotel Sultan guys, thought it would be). The catch was, as I found out en route, that the taxi collectif was actually going to Beirut and the driver was going to off-load me in the middle of Lebanon somewhere. I attempted to connect with the Zen of travel, on the grounds of "What could possibly go wrong?", and admired the view up the gorge as we hurtled along towards the border crossing at Masnaa. I find to my Jordanian eyes, the names of villages in Syria and Lebanon a little peculiar, but let's not talk about what the Syrians and Lebanese think about Jordan, altogether!
I was also hoping that the advice on the Lebanese embassy website (Australians and New Zealanders can get free visas at the border) was true. And it was.
But my goodness, there's a big difference between the Lebanese troops on the border and the pretend fellows the Syrians and Jordanians post at their border crossings. These Lebanese chaps have about them the air of men who have spent much of their adult lives shooting to kill their fellow citizens, and it wouldn't take a whole lot more to get them started on it all over again. Just the way they wore their uniform sleeves rolled up, the state of their boots and most of all their attitude, I thought, uh oh, REAL soldiers. And they are everywhere - like in Israel, always some guy going home from or returning to barracks, asleep straight way as he sits down in the front seat (of course) of the mini van, guns at the ready.
And speaking of mini vans, let's get back to Bar Elias (I think this is the name of the town in question) where my taxi collectif (sorry - just love French, you can simply say comical English words in a pretend accent and it works!) driver kindly drove around town, zooming up on mini vans and yelling at the driver "Baalbek?". Eventually one nodded, we cut him off, and I was transferred from vehicle to van. Having no Lebanese money (never did get any) I was a little worried about paying the mini van guy, but the taxi driver assured me that $US2 would be fine. And it was, for which I got an extravagent, and speedy, tour of the lower Beqa'a as the mini van criss crossed this fertile, wide Valley and ended up at Baalbek.

Here is a view through the mediaeval walls around the main complex at Baalbek - for those of you not paying attention in class, the sacred compound was fortified in the middle Islamic period (after Justinian had the main temple dismantled to use the columns in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and Theodorius built a church over the altars in the courtyard, which was a radical thing to do - most temple to church conversions hedged their bets and left the altar area and the inner temple rooms alone):

















If you click on this photo you will see that the block in the front says IOMH - Iovi Optimo Maximo Heliopolitano - Jupiter the Best, the Highest of Heliopolitanus (=the name of Baalbek in the Roman period, although, obviously, that is in Greek, and further, clearly, Baal, Helios the sun god, and Jupiter/Zeus get mixed up together here).



I went mad photographing details, but was in a bit of rush, as I'd contacted Bettina as soon as I got out of the van, and Stephen is right, she is a sweetie. She explained where the team had lunch (they rent several houses out the back of Baalbek, but the main team has a floor of a hotel in town) and that gave me 1.5 hours to race around the huge complex before heading off the joing the Germans.
So, here are some photos. I found it very difficult to snap the scale of the place (Carrie Swan has a shot of herself spreadeagled against a piece of column which is on its side and, although she is tall, her arms and legs only just reach to the edges - and that is from one of the smaller columns of the Jupiter temple).

OK: this is a detail off of the temple of "Jupiter" entabulature with the main altar in the background. People climbed up the internal staircases of the altar-tower, to sacrifice on the artificial high-place




More gorgeous carving lying around

These are the remaining six columns from the main temple

And here we have the famous doorway to the temple of "Bacchus" - no idea actually which deity was worshipped here. That keystone is cemented in today, with a particularly ugly bit of so-called conservation work, but was held up until the late 19th century by dirt - giving you an idea of how much debris built up. In the 60s and 70s an architect with delusions of grandeur, Kalayan, proceeded to clear large sections of the site, in the employee of the Lebanese antiquities authorities, and re-erect quite a lot of stone work. The current workmen look back on these days with nostalgia, as they involved a lot of action, manly pulling on ropes with something to see for all the sweat afterwards. This modern poncing about slowly with trowels and ground penetrating radar is not nearly what they consider REAL archaeology.


this looks up at the curved ceiling of the colonnade around the outside of the cella of "Bacchus"

















After lunch I had archaeology fun talking about lamps and large storage jars with Bettina and her colleagues. Knock off was at 4pm, and two of the team took me into town for fruit smoothies and then to the internet cafe, somewhere in the back streets, up some urine scented stairs in a very seedy looking establishment. I think it was a ladies only internet cafe though. But then there was a bit of very Lebanese business.
After the civil war, the government supplied power throughout the land. But most of the land didn't pay for it, plus the fiefdoms which had arisen in the land during the war realised they were missing out on money. So now the central government only supplies the power it is paid for by the region, and then cuts off the supply, ie no electricity comes down the wire for, say 2 hours, and then it comes back on. The region can choose to pay more to the central government, but because it is Lebanon, lots of deals have been done with guys who privately generate electricity (do not ask me how this works, but around Baalbek there are a lot of T-Shirts displaying machine guns and the slogan "Hezbollah will always be victorious in Lebanon", so I figure it's better not to ask). So each town has a power switching schedule, and the lights etc go out in Baalbek at 6pm for about 30 seconds until somewhere (I think, bizarrely, building by building) a switch is thrown and the private power comes on. So in the internet cafe, you have to make sure you aren't in the middle of an email at 6pm. Or 8pm, 10pm or 2 am when all this happens again!

Then we went back to the hotel the use for most of the team. I couldn't photo inside as there were always people around, but each floor of this joint is like a mini house with kitchen, big bedrooms with en suites and a giant living area. Because it is a german team this living room had all the sofas pushed back, and lots of swish tables, lamps and computers all over it.
The pay off is in the morning - out on the balconey eating my cornflakes, this was the view:

Hauran part 2

Well, that was weird. Blogger stopped me putting up any more photos on that last blog - perhaps it recognized that I was up way past my bed-time. Or it was some simple error, and I was too tired to work it out.

So here are more photos from that day-trip with Pierre-Marie:

The Syrians have discovered a red plastic, and now every house has water tanks made from this very bright red. I'm in two minds about it - they told me it is the only possible colour for water tanks, although here in Jordan we use white plastic, which is somewhat less visually polluting in the landscape.
Does make the columns of the Rabbos pseudo-peripteral temple at Canawat/Qanawat/Canatha look better than ever.


This is a shot of the wadi which was used as a major water source in the Nabataean/Roman era. Not quite visible behind the conifers is a theatre, further around to the right, out of shot, are bits and pieces of aqueduct and nymphaeum (public fountain, highly decorated) none of which make much sense in a photo, so this shot shows a Modern bridge and a round Druze temple. Can't tell you much about what goes on in it, as the Druze religion is an initiation religion, and you move up in knowledge.




This is the outer face of the Serail, which used to be a Roman temple, and was converted to a church complex, and then was remodelled again in the Islamic/mediaeval period. Alot of it includes spolia from other buildings.















































That's all folks - the Si'a and Shahba photos aren't that great - I was concentrating on technical issues for those sites - and of course, had missed the Shahba mosaics.

Next stop .... Baalbek!!