The Goddess Artemis was the patron deity of Jerash. A Hellenised version of an earlier, indigenous deity, archaeology has established that her sanctuary long occupied a prominent spot in the city.
Those early remains are now buried by a massive complex built by the Romans in the second century AD. Although ruined, the remains which include the propylaea, the sacred temenos and the temple of Artemis are still magnificent. They demonstrate the continued importance of an indigenous goddess to a city that spent most of its existence subject to foreign powers.
The Goddess Artemis of Jerash
In the Greek pantheon, Artemis was only a daughter of Zeus. Yet in Jerash she was the city’s patron deity.
Artemis was not the original name of Jerash’s patron goddess. The name was probably applied to the indigenous patron goddess when Jerash was first established as a city under the Seleucids. Artemis was chosen because her attributes most closely matched those of the original deity whose name is now lost.
Artemis was a goddess of the wild earth- hills and forests. But she was also a patron of women, especially at times of childbirth. This indicates that the patron goddess of Jerash was a mother goddess figure.
This goddess remained important throughout the history of ancient Jerash. Although the sanctuaries of both Zeus and Artemis occupied prominent high spots of the city, Artemis’s took precedence. When the Romans remodelled Jerash, Artemis’s sanctuary was not only rebuilt first, it was the focal point of the redesigned city.
The Propylaea or Gateway
The sanctuary was accessed via a monumental gateway or propylaea. Although ruined by earthquakes in the sixth century AD, the propylaea was reconstructed between 1928 and1931, by George Horsfield, later head of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, and later P A Ricci.
This reconstruction has revealed an imposing structure. Set back from the road, the propylaea consisted of a 19.5 metre wide porticoed triple. Each of its four main columns measured 1.5 metres in diameter. From this, it was possible to calculate that the height of the columns were 16m high. This meant the entrance to the temple site not only towered over the rest of the main cardo, but dominated it.
Two small doorways flanked a main central entrance of 5metres by 9metres. Above them were decorative architraves and shell niches which held statues. The whole structure was topped off by reliefs of acanthus leaves and the dedicatory inscription. This revealed that the patron of the propylaea was Attidius Cornelianus, a legate of the then emperor Antoninus Pius and that the propylaea was built in 150AD.
The propylaea led onto a walled stairway which led to the temenos or sacred space of the temple. This stairway was divided into two. The first stage consisted of seven flights of seven stairs which terminated in a terrace where the altar of Artemis was located. A further three flights of stairs led to the main sanctuary itself.
The Temenos of Artemis
The sacred precinct of Artemis measured 161m by 121m and was enclosed by a wall and porticoed colonnade which consisted of 36 columns on the north and south sides and 26 on the east and west. The columns were all set on a 7.5 m high wall.
The north and south porticos housed rooms for temple business but only their lower walls remain. Of the colonnades, the south is best preserved. Now fully excavated, the original unweathered cream colour of the stone is visible.
Little remains of the rest of colonnade and the wall of the sacred precinct, which means that the ruins of the temenos are now exposed to rather than secluded from the rest of the city, as they were in antiquity.
The courtyard would have been paved but its stone was stripped when the sanctuary was finally abandoned in the fifth century AD. The remains of Byzantine and Umayyad kilns cutting into the earlier archaeology reveal that it subsequently became a pottery yard. But the focal point of the whole sanctuary, the temple of Artemis, still remains.
The Roman Temple and Cella of Artemis
The temple is set at the back of the temenos. It was built on a raised platform that elevated it above its surroundings and accessed via a stairway that remains today.
Underneath was a barrel vaulted crypt which meant the floor inside the temple was of uneven heights. A stairway to the adyton helped disguise this sudden change in then the floor level as well as create a dramatic approach to the shrine of the goddess.
Although ruined, the remains of the adyton and the niche for the goddess’s statue survives today. Bolt holes on the walls indicate that they were lined with marble slabs. These were later removed and incorporated into Jerash’s Christian churches.
The temple was surrounded by a line of columns- 11 on the long sides and six on the short sides. The main entrance faced east. It was marked by a colonnade three columns deep. Its doorway was flanked by niches with a Nabatean element to them, the one clue to the indigenous origins of the classically named and housed goddess within.
The columns show how the temple was designed to withstand natural hazards. The high position of the temple exposed it to high winds and the area was Jerash itself was subject to earth tremors. So the columns were designed to be flexible and sway. The movement of these ‘dancing columns ‘as they were dubbed can be seen today by wedging a spoon between the blocks and watching it move up and down as the columns subtly move.
Despite these measures, an earthquake did finally destroy the sanctuary. But the capitals of the temples colonnade remained undamaged, a curious fact considering they would have been affected by the falling masonry of the entablature above them.
All of the surviving parts of the entablature have been recovered from Jerash’s churches but the fragments are incomplete. This suggests that not only was the entablature never raised, it was not completed. Despite its magnificence and undoubted importance to Jerash, it could be the roman temple of Artemis was never finished.
Sources
Browning, I, 1982. Jerash and the Decapolis. Chatto & Windus: London
Gates, C, 2003. Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Near East and Egypt, Greece and Rome. London: Routledge
Wharton, A, J, 1995. Refiguring the Post Classical City-Duras Europos, Jerash, Jerusalem and Ravenna. Cambridge University Press.
Natasha Sheldon - A writer since 2000, Natasha Sheldon holds a BA Hons in ancient history and archaeology and MA in ancient history and historiography.
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