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Jordan 

Jordan and the surrounding countries have been occupied by man for millennia. This region is the cradle of the 3 monotheistic religions and in a way, the crucible of Western and Middle Eastern civilization. 

In Greek and then Roman times, the region was not only the spiritual but also and above all the economic center of the world. 

Roman Jordan 

Although most of the cities of Jordan were founded during the Greek era, the region assumed a major importance in economic exchanges under the Roman Empire. 

The country is therefore full of testimonies from this period. Entire cities have been miraculously protected by a series of earthquakes that completely covered them with a thick blanket of sand. It saved the old stones, but not the men who cut and stacked them to make their homes and temples.

 

Spoken comments in the film: 

Amman is a very old city, one of the oldest cities in the world to be still inhabited.

Formerly the capital of the Ammonites, a biblical people who have occupied the area since the Iron Age. The city was called Rhabbat Ammon and was fortified several millennia BC. Centuries later, the Greeks renamed it Philadelphia. In the meantime, the city was occupied among others by the Assyrians and the Persians

The citadel is now an open-air museum and you can see the ruins of the temple of Hercules built by the Romans.

The Umayyad Palace dating from the 7th or 8th century and a Byzantine church from the 6th century also occupied the site.

Amman being in a fairly active seismic zone and was destroyed several times by an earthquake and was gradually abandoned to the point of being nothing more than a small village when the Circassians at the end of the 19th century rebuilt the city that was going become the capital of Transjordan in 1921. Later, Transjordan became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The Roman theater probably built by Emperor Antoninus Pius in the middle of the 2nd century AD has 6000 seats.

Next to the amphitheater is the much smaller odeon. The odeon was used for musical performances.

These buildings are still used today for shows.

Jerash was founded towards the end of the 4th century BC and was an important city in antiquity. Successive conquests made it fall under the Judeans, the Nabataeans and finally the Romans.

It will be plundered in the 7th century by the Persians and then by the Arabs.

After having suffered various earthquakes it was abandoned after destruction during clashes between Muslims and Crusaders during the Crusades.

Jerash has remained hidden under a thick layer of sand for centuries, which explains its extraordinary state of preservation.

This temple is extraordinarily well preserved.

Most of its columns remained standing despite the fact that Jerash experienced many earthquakes.

This temple being very important, the Roman architects implemented all the anti-seismic techniques which were known at the time.

Like what, the architects did not wait for the XXth century to counter the forces of nature.

If the name of Umm Qais evokes little for those who have not visited it, it is a safe bet that its ancient name is much more evocative: Antioch. Umm But also bears the name of Gadara.

Here is another city dating from the Roman era which presents an admirable state of conservation, in addition to the admirable landscapes and panoramas that can be admired while walking there.