Musings from the Merse
Monday, September 04, 2006
Moon-rise over Roman Ampitheatre, Amman
This is an unusual late evening image of the Roman Ampitheatre in Amman which was the scene of a terrorist attack on British and other tourists today. When Huttonian was in Amman in the mid 1990s it was a popular destination for visitors to the capital. Obviously the terrorist is doing his best to disrupt the tourist industry, so important to Jordan's economy-possibly in revenge for the killing of Zarqawi, a senior Jordanian thug(allegedly with links to Al Qaeda) who was killed in Iraq some months ago. One news report claimed that the assailant was also from Zarqa, a Jordanian town, north of Amman.
Comments:
such a horrid random act. By the way, huttonian - we thought you would know better!! There are NO amphitheatres in Jordan only theatres. Amphitheatres are in the round or oval. T
Huttonian is duly chastened. I took my cue from a BBC report. Foolish. But I am not sure that I knew better during my nerarly 4 years in Amman. As Professor David Kennedy puts it;
There are no amphitheatres in Jordan and they are rare anywhere in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. The term is regularly misused. What you see downtown in Amman and at Jerash etc are theatres (usually a half circle). An amphitheatre is a circle (as at Pompeii) or oval (e.g. the Colosseum or Cirencester and many other places - this is the commonest form).
The amphitheatre was normally the place used for wild beast hunts, gladiatorial fights, executing criminals for public entertainment, etc. The theatre would be for plays, mime, pantomime, etc. It all sounds much more refined but the reality is that in the Roman East they often used their theatres for the sort of bloody activities usually put on in the amphitheatre elsewhere.
Just to confuse the issue, at Scythopolis/ Beth Shean, the biggest of the Decapolis cities and the only one west of the Jordan, they built an amphitheatre that consists of two straight sides and with semicircular ends - i.e. not really an oval. If you turn then to a plan of the circus at Jerash you will see that at a later date they cut off one end with a curving wall to create something very similar in design. The emerging view is that in some cities they could use the circus/ hippodrome as a place to st/age the bloodier entertainment but fencing off one end.
The nearest real amphitheatre you can see (sort of) is at Bostra (just traced a few years ago) or the odd one at Scythopolis or go a bit further and you can see the one at Caesarea.
Not many people know that. Thankyou Joladies
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There are no amphitheatres in Jordan and they are rare anywhere in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. The term is regularly misused. What you see downtown in Amman and at Jerash etc are theatres (usually a half circle). An amphitheatre is a circle (as at Pompeii) or oval (e.g. the Colosseum or Cirencester and many other places - this is the commonest form).
The amphitheatre was normally the place used for wild beast hunts, gladiatorial fights, executing criminals for public entertainment, etc. The theatre would be for plays, mime, pantomime, etc. It all sounds much more refined but the reality is that in the Roman East they often used their theatres for the sort of bloody activities usually put on in the amphitheatre elsewhere.
Just to confuse the issue, at Scythopolis/ Beth Shean, the biggest of the Decapolis cities and the only one west of the Jordan, they built an amphitheatre that consists of two straight sides and with semicircular ends - i.e. not really an oval. If you turn then to a plan of the circus at Jerash you will see that at a later date they cut off one end with a curving wall to create something very similar in design. The emerging view is that in some cities they could use the circus/ hippodrome as a place to st/age the bloodier entertainment but fencing off one end.
The nearest real amphitheatre you can see (sort of) is at Bostra (just traced a few years ago) or the odd one at Scythopolis or go a bit further and you can see the one at Caesarea.
Not many people know that. Thankyou Joladies
