thoughts on Jerash

I arrived on the night of the 2nd. So much has happened. . . . Amman is actually one of the cities of northern Jordan which are considered part of the Decapolis (ten cities thriving at the height of the Roman Empire), and was orginally known as "Philadelphia." On Tuesday, I visited Jerash with an archeologist, Marlina, (Ph.D. student studying at Oxford--she is from Finland) who is just finishing her field session at Petra, and is staying at the American Center of Oriental Research for a couple of days to catch a few sites). Of course, volumes have been written about Jerash, and there is far too much history to detail here. Suffice it to say that Jerash was a major center of trade, falling along one of the major ancient trade routes.
The ruins here are in various states of decay and restoration, with buildings and sites still standing from the Roman empire, through the Byzantine Empire, and into early Islamic period. The sites include the following: an ancient arena where chariots raced daily and gladiators fought, two amphitheaters for plays and musical performances, a seemingly misplaced fountain to the water nymphs--which apparently flowed continually from the Roman aquaducts, a temple to Artimus, Zeus's daughter, and the remains of a beautiful tile floor of a Byzantine church.

My impressions:
1) The connection between religion and violence, and violence and entertainment, seems to be universal. Too often various faiths (or at least the interpretations and manifestations of a faith) are concerned primarily with imposing its order and values on a people (and does so mainly through means of fear & intimidation). From the Tao te Ching--translated by Stephen Mitchell: #18 "When the great Tao is forgotten, goodness and piety appear./ When the body's intelligence declines,/ cleverness and knowledge step forth./ Where there in no peace in the family,/ filial piety begins./ When the country falls into chaos,/ patriotism is born.") And so goes culture. . . .

2) And yet, something still remains of the human heart and spirit. Something does rise out of the ashes, something still sings, even if it is only a song of loss. The longing for art and beauty resides.

3) As the various empires rose and declined (challenging terms for a postmodernists, of course, as the decline of one empire IS the rise of another) there is a period of hybridization where distinct parts of one culture morph into a different thing (or more exactly, the entire process of cultures moving through time is one of the morphing of hybrids). A stark example of this I saw in the Byzantine tiles on the floor of a ruined church--many of the tile patterns were of people, animals characters, etc. According to Marlina, when the Byzantines were overpowered by the rise of Islam, the tiles on the faces of these various beings were taken out, scrambled, and replaced, so that no recognizable icon could be seen. Marlina said that the edict to destroy icons came down from the head of the church, likely as the old icons had let the people down, had not protected the people, so they were not longer given positions of significance (or power).

4) I cannot reconcile the strange paradox (redundant, all paradox is strange) that there seems to be a force larger than any one individual behind these changes, AND there is also the individual resisting or promoting change.
salam, Laura