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Modern photograph of the Roman ruins of Jerash · Wikimedia Commons
Jerash
Arabia Petraea · Roman province·Jordan·Founded 170 BCE (Seleucid)
Best-preserved of the Decapolis cities (Roman Gerasa). Oval forum, colonnaded cardo, Temple of Artemis.
A living Jordanian city of around 50,000 whose homes sit alongside ancient Gerasa's ruins, one of the best-preserved Greco-Roman cities outside Italy.
Excavation history
1928-1934
Yale University, with the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and the American Schools of Oriental Research — Conducted the first major systematic excavation of Gerasa, with results published in the landmark 1938 report 'Gerasa, City of the Decapolis,' edited by Carl H. Kraeling.
2011-2016
Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project (Aarhus University and Munster/Ruhr University Bochum) — Excavated the previously unexplored Northwest Quarter, the highest point in the walled city, uncovering building phases through the city's destruction in the AD 749 earthquake.
Notable finds
Statue of Aphrodite from the Eastern Baths
Carved from Pentelic marble imported from Athens, this larger-than-life Aphrodite carries a Greek inscription naming the priest Demetrios as its donor and dating its dedication to 20 March 154 CE, unearthed in Gerasa's Eastern Roman Baths after eighteen centuries underground.
Jerash Archaeological Museum, Jordan
Statue of Hadrian
A life-size marble statue of Hadrian commemorates the emperor's winter visit to Gerasa in 129-130 CE, when the city raised a triumphal arch in his honor, and now stands among the Roman highlights of the Jerash Archaeological Museum.
Jerash Archaeological Museum, Jordan
Statues of the Muses
French and Jordanian archaeologists pulled seven of the nine Muses, headless or broken but still recognizable on their thrones, out of Gerasa's Eastern Baths during a 2016-2018 excavation that produced 27 statues in total.
Jerash Archaeological Museum, Jordan
Statue of Zeus
A statue of Zeus emerged from the same Eastern Baths dig as Gerasa's Aphrodite and Muses, and was set up for display at the city's own ruined Zeus temple rather than shipped off to a museum case.
On display at the Temple of Zeus, Jerash, Jordan
Statues of Cybele and Dionysus
The 2018 season at Gerasa's Eastern Baths turned up statues of Cybele and Dionysus alongside a draped female figure, part of a haul of 27 Greco-Roman deities that archaeologists called an unprecedented find for the Middle East.
Jerash Archaeological Museum, Jordan
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