Another Weekend in Amman

September 29th, 2019 – Finally, after almost of month of weekend adventures, I spent a weekend in Amman. It was a pretty lazy weekend, filled with homework before midterms and catching up on sleep. However, my friends and I still manged to visit 2 really cool sites in Amman: the Jordan Museum and the King Abdullah I Mosque.

The Jordan Museum is a fairly new museum in Amman, opening just 5 years ago. The museum holds quite the collection of artifacts from Jordan’s history between 7500 BCE and the Byzantine Era. The oldest artifact in the museum is the “Two Headed Statue” and other plaster statues found near Amman in the 1980s. Archaeologists and anthropologists do not know much about their purpose or the people who made them, but they claim the statues are one of the oldest in the world.

The museum then moves into a section on the Bronze Age in Jordan. This exhibit includes many objects found near the city of Karak, about 90 miles south of Amman. Many of these objects are of Moabite origin. The Moabites were the ancient kingdom that controlled most of present-day central Jordan during the late Bronze and Iron Ages. The Moabites are often referenced in the Old Testament, mostly because of their clashes with the Israelites and their juxtaposition with two other tribes: the Edomites (Southern Jordan) and the Ammonites (Northern Jordan). The two most significant items in this exhibit are two Steles: the Al-Balu’ Stele and the Mesha Stele.

Unfortunately, the original Mesha Stele is on display at the Louvre in France. Jordan has demanded the stone be returned, but France has yet to comply with this demand (*sigh*). However, it was still really exciting to see a replica of the Stele. Last fall in Dr. Bucher’s Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, we talked about the significance of the Stele as an extra-biblical source of the 2 Kings 3 narrative. It still makes my heart skip a beat to see the lessons I’ve learned at Etown come to life in Jordan.

The rest of the museum focuses on Jordan during the Classical Era, which includes Greek and Roman statues recovered from all over the country, the Petra Papyri, and the copper Dead Sea Scrolls.

Recently, I was also able to tour the King Abdullah I Mosque. The Mosque was built to memorialize the late King Abdullah I, the first king of the modern state of Jordan, by his grandson, King Hussein I. The story of King Abdullah I is tragic. While praying with his grandson, Prince Hussein, one Friday in 1951 at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, King Abdullah I was assassinated by a Palestinian who believed rumors that he and the Prime Minister of Lebanon (who was assassinated in Amman 4 days earlier) were negotiating a joint separate peace deal with Israel. The assassin attempted to kill Prince Hussein, but he was saved when the bullet was deflected by the medal King Abdullah I insisted he wear on his chest.

The Mosque is one of the largest in Jordan. It can hold 3000 worshipers beneath its beautiful blue mosaic dome. It’s also one of the few mosques in Jordan that tourists are allowed to visit.

It was a relaxing break from traveling this weekend. I spent lots of time on the patio connected to my bedroom doing homework or writing. The nights are starting to get cool here in Amman. Currently, I’m sitting on my patio in a long-sleeve shirt because the breeze adds an unexpected, but welcome, chill to the air. I will be traveling a bit this weekend, but you’ll have to wait until next time to know where I went!

-Matt