Archaeology

U. J. Seetzen rediscovered the site in 1806. However, serious exploration at Gerasa did not begin until the turn of the 20th century. Both Circassians’ repopulation of the area in 1878 and G. Schumacher’s work at the beginning of the 20th century helped allow more intense study, which flourished most after the establishment of the British Mandatory Government following World War I. Scholars such as G. L. Harding, John Garstang, and Nelson Glueck led the first systematic excavation of the site.

Since the 1970s, the Jordanian Department of Antiquities has led work at Gerasa, with the help of an Italian team from the University of Turin. The site has yielded artifacts from as early as the Neolithic Age, though the bulk of discoveries date from the Greek and Roman eras. Most of the site’s visible ruins date from the city’s second-century ad golden age.

Because Gerasa was a frontier city located on a plain, it is an exemplary model of city planning. A cardo (a north-south street in Roman cities) runs roughly parallel to the Chrysorhoas River (Wadi Jerash). Two decumani (an east-west street in Roman cities) intersect the cardo at right angles. Many of the colonnades that lined these streets still remain among the ruins. The city was surrounded by a wall ten feet thick and two miles in circumference, and six gates—two at the main entrances, north and south; two in the western section of the wall; and two water gates where the river entered and exited the city. The surrounding countryside is amenable to both arable and pastoral cultivation.

Other architectural features include:

• At the south end of the cardo, an elliptical forum opens to the temple of Zeus, 15,000-seat hippodrome, 5,000-seat southern theater, and Hadrian’s Arch.

• The city center features the nymphaeum and the temple of Artemis, the patroness of the city.

• The northern part of the city includes a bathhouse and a smaller theater.

• The residential area is separated from the more commercial area by the river, with the residential section on the eastern side and the commercial/civic section on the western side.

• Three barrel-vaulted stone bridges provide passage over the river, two on the decumani and one on the processional road that leads to the temple of Artemis.