The Nabataean temple ruins atop of Jabal et-Tannur overlook the confluence of Wadi al-Hasa and Wadi La‘aban north of the modern town of Tafila. From the 2nd century BC through to the middle of the 4th century CE the sanctuary was an important pilgrimage place for the Nabataeans to worship, and celebrate seasonal rituals and banquets. With no spring for water supply, it was not a permanent settlement. It functioned in connection with the neighboring village and temple of Khirbet edh-Dharih, some 7 km south on the old caravan route coming from the capital city of Petra.
The sanctuary consisted of a temenos (temple enclosure), with a forecourt and roofed colonnaded walkways on the north and south sides connecting to rooms equipped with benches on three sides, called triclinium for resting and ritual banqueting.
The eastern façade of the inner temenos was also richly decorated. The famous relief known as the Vegetation Goddess, veiled by leaves and framed by flowers with an eagle above her comes from a semi-circular pediment over the main portal. Both sculptures are today on display at the Jordan Museum in Amman. Scholars suggest to see in her the goddess of the nearby spring of La‘aban. An inscription found on site dated 8 or 7 BC mentions building works dedicated by the guardian of this spring. After 2000 years, this name lives on in the name Wadi La‘aban, the river bed connecting Khirbet et-Tannur and Khirbet edh-Dharih.
The inner temenos (sacred area) was an unroofed square enclosure (ca. 10 x 10 m) with an altar platform in the center that had a frontal niche to host the cult statues of the main god and goddess. A male cult figure holding a lightning bolt and flanked by bull calves was found during excavations, probably the supreme god Dushara with attributes and iconography adopted by the Nabataeans from neighbor cultures. From the goddess Allat only one foot and a part of her lion throne were found. Placed between them might have been the zodiac ring encircling a bust of a Tyche, carried by a winged Victory (Nike), another one of the famous discoveries at Khirbet et-Tannur. The upper zodiac piece is in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum, USA, together with the main cult statues. The sculptures date from the main construction phase of the first half of the 2nd century CE. The altar niche was surrounded by an elaborate decoration including busts also representing zodiac signs, from which two have survived: the personification of Pisces (in Amman) and Virgo (in Cincinnati).
A staircase led to the altar's roof, where a sacred flame was lit and animal sacrifices were burnt. Incense, grains and offering cakes were burnt as offerings on either side of the altar niche, and on smaller free-standing altars scattered around the site as well.
The east-west axis alignment of the sanctuary ensured that the rising sun would illuminate the altar niche during the spring and autumn equinoxes, when special rituals and celebrations took place to ensure agricultural abundance. The remains of ceramic lamps with nozzles on several levels suggest night-time processions and rituals to worship zodiacal deities appearing in the starry sky.
Behind the Great Propylaea, the pilgrims in Eleusis came to the so-called Lesser Propylon, a monumnetal gateway into the sanctuary of Eleusis, a gift to the goddesses by Appius Pulcher during his consulate in 54 BCE. It had two richly and differently decorated sides.On the outside of the sanctuary, the southern side had Antae extended forward of the doors, and two unique Corinthian columns supporting a roof of long vestibule with Doric entablature. (Shown on the pictures above)
This gate replaced an earlier Peisistratid gate at the same location.
On the inner, northern side, the gates were flanked by Caryatids and the inner end was divided into 3 by short walls, parallel to exterior walls (Shown on the pictures beneath)
The ground-plan was unmistakably of the same type as that of the temple of Ba'al Shamin, although it is not similar in all details, and is on a somewhat smaller scale, its façade being a little over 15 m. wide as opposed to 19 m. in the other temple. But here we have again the outer wall and the interior cella with a passage between them. Again we have the distyle entrance, but not the recessed porch of the temple of Ba'al Shamin. Here the two columns stand between half-columns at the ends of walls that extend from the angles of the building to the line of the interior cella, and the passage behind the columns is continuous with the passage around the cella.
The cella has but one doorway; its front wall and parts of its two side walls are in situ. The location of the rear portion of the outer wall of the temple was determined from foundations well down the slope; the outer walls formed a square. The rear wall of the inner cella could not be found. The passage between the columns and the cella wall is 2.76 m. wide, the passage on the right is 2 m. wide, that on the left 2.40 m. If the inner cella was square the passage in the rear would have been only i.6o m. wide. In the plan I have drawn a conjectured wall which makes the cella slightly oblong. The four interior columns are placed on conjecture from broken shafts lying on the slope behind the temple.
The ornament of this temple, though not exactly similar to that of the temple of Ba’al Shamin, is entirely in keeping with it (Ill. 336). The mouldings of the podium-cap, the architrave, and the cornice, are no more than alternating series of ovolos and cavettos which are not segmental. The torus mouldings of the column- bases have a profile which is characteristic of Nabataean work, being not semicircular but much flattened. The capitals (Ill. 337) have but a single row of large leaves of the thick, heavy, acanthus type, the volutes are also thick, and the abacus very heavy and moulded with two sunken cavettos. The most interesting features of these capitals are the grotesque human figures which appear in the middle of the outer faces of the two capitals and the faces of the half capitals which are turned toward the middle inter- columniation. These grotesques represent the heads, shoulders, and arms of figures a little below half natural size. The heads are bald, the faces grinning, and the hands clasp the tops of the mid-leaves of the capitals.
The astragal below each capital is treated with rope ornament. The carved ornament of the doorway of the cella is more like that of the entrance to the theatron than that of the doorways of the great temple which are decorated with grape-vine. This may indicate that the temple of Dushara belongs rather to the end of the period from 33 to 13 b. c. than to the time of the temple of Bacal Shamin. There can be no doubt that this temple belongs to the period mentioned in the inscription 1 upon the architrave of the peristyle of the theatron.
Among the fragments of sculpture found within the doorway of the temple was the lower part of the drapery and the feet of a statue, a little larger than life-size (Ill. 337). The feet are represented as treading out wine from grapes; the wine is depicted by wavy lines flowing from the crushed fruit, and a face, probably personifying the wine, is shown protruding from the grapes. The face was broken off, but was found, and is shown in Ill. 334, Frag. P. The statue to which this fragment belonged could have been no other than that of Dushara, the wine-god of the Nabataeans, and it was the presence of this statue in the temple, as well as the importance of this divinity, which was only second to that of Ba’al Shamin, that suggested to us that the newly-found temple was dedicated to Dushara.
The Theatre was a central building and institution of the developed Greek city state. It was used for a wide range of dramatic and other kinds of entertainment, but it was also here that the demos, the people, met in assembly. The Aphrodisias theatre preserves its full twenty-seven tiers of seats below the walkway (diazōma) and a few rows of seats above it, as well as much of the stage architecture. It originally seated c. 7,000 persons.
The auditorium (cavea) was built against the prehistoric settlement hill (höyük) in the late hellenistic period, and an elaborate three-storeyed marble stage building was added by Zoilos before 28 BCE. The architecture of this new facade is notable for its light, playful aedicular design and for its high-quality and highly varied ornament. The dedication of the stage building, inscribed in large letters on the Doric architrave of the stage and again in the second storey, records that ‘the stage building (skēnē) and the stage in front (proskēnion), as well as all the ornaments on it (proskosmēmata) ’ were paid for by Gaius Julius Zoilos, who is identified as a freed slave of Augustus, the first Roman emperor. A series of major statues was discovered fallen on the stage and in the orchestra. An Apollo, two Muses, portrait figures, and several Victories belonged to the stage building. Two statues of boxers stood on the ends of the retaining (analemma) walls for the auditorium.
In the first century CE, the auditorium seating was extended upwards on substructures and re-lined throughout with marble seating . On the north side, its great ashlar retaining wall continued to a much lower level, where it formed the back wall of part of the south stoa of the South Agora. There was direct access to the Theatre from the stoa below by a large vaulted stairway through the retaining wall to the cavea above. In the second century CE, the orchestra level in the Theatre was lowered to form a safe arena-pit for gladiatorial and animal shows.
In front of the Temple of Baal Shamin was an enclosed and colonnaded court paved with well-fitted slabs of basalt, and, still farther eastward, two long narrow courts, end to end, separated by a monumental gateway. On a knoll to the south of the outermost court he noted the ruins of a small temple, and, to the north of the same court, an enclosure upon On the north is a terrace, 7 m. below the court, which is heaped high with debris in which are many interesting fragments denoting the presence of a buried building of some kind. The eastern and western limits of this terrace are marked by walls of unusual thickness.
The end of the middle court is marked by a flight of steps 87 cm. high, and by a fine specimen of highly finished wall with an elaborate gateway in the middle. This is the east wall of the peristylar court in front of the great temple. It had preserved about 1.50 m. of its original height, gateway and all. Within the gateway, that is, between the jambs of the portal, are two more steps which raise the pavement of the inner court 1.25 m. above that of the middle court. This inner court with its peristyle termed the Theatron, in the light of an inscription in Nabataean which uses this Greek word, given in Nabataean letters, in such a way that it can be applied to nothing else.
This court is also slightly off axis with the one which precedes it, it measures about 25 m. north and south and about 21m. east and west, inside the wall. The colonnade occupies three sides of a rectangle of 18 m. by 20 m. in front of the temple. Between the colonnade and the wall are a narrow passage and two steps, like the seats of a theatre, which may have suggested the name Theatron to the builders. The side walls of this enclosure are carried along the sides of the temple, at a distance of about 2.50 m. to enclose a space 12 m. deep in the rear of the temple; this space was also paved.
The elaborate composition of pedestals and pilasters which gave dignity to the outer face of the entrance, and two square piers with engaged columns that formed the inner face, in line with the eastern colonnade of the peristyle. Between the outer doorway and the inner piers, the steps, or seats, of the theatron were carried almost to the jambs of the portal. On the outside, four steps the uppermost of which formed a broad platform before the gateway. Upon the platform just mentioned the lower courses of the jambs of the gate were found, a narrow, deep, pedestal beside either jamb, and, outside of these on either hand, a projecting wall terminating in a pilaster from which the flat surface of the wall extends to right and left. The ground-plan and the drawing of the actual state (Ill. 329) illustrate this unusual plan, and show that the effect is that of a deeply recessed portal. The above- named drawings and the accompanying photograph (Ill. 331) show the extraordinary design of this monument and the interesting combinations of mouldings of various profiles that were employed in its execution.
The three outermost mouldings of the jamb, a fascia, a shallow cavetto and a narrow torus, are returned inward at the foot, and carried across the opening as a step. Upon this, and only 15 cm. back from the edge, is a second step, with an elaborately moulded riser, set between the jambs. The face of the jambs (Ill. 331 and C. in 330) is ornamented with four bands of carving separated by narrow mouldings; the innermost band appears to be a flowing vine of convolvulus, the next, slightly bevelled, bears a running design of thistles; the moulding between them remembles a miniature crenellation. The third band, a shallow cavetto, has broad, flat leaves which have two alternating patterns on their faces; the fourth are stiff palmate leaves, like the ends of the acanthus.
Adjoining either jamb is a narrow pedestal (B. in Ill. 330) fixed to the wall and projecting about 60 cm. from it. The deep base-moulding of the wall, — a fascia, a flat torus, a high, flat cyma recta and a narrow cavetto -, forms also the base of the pedestal, but its profile is slightly flattened. The die is only 15 cm. thick, it is 40 cm. high and is adorned with tall upright leaves, one acanthus-like leaf on its outer face and three plain leaves, either uncarved acanthus or some fat water leaf, on each side. The cap of the pedestal is plain. The pilasters (A. in Ill. 330) project 80 cm. from the wall in which the portal is, and only 17 cm. from the wall extending beyond them. Its base has a moulding of the same height as the base-moulding of the wall, but of different profile; the two lower members and the uppermost member are the same in both, but the pilaster base has a deep cavetto and a flat torus separated by a fillet in place of the flat cyma recta, and it most interesting to see how these two sets of mouldings were warped together at the inner angles. The base-moulding of the long walls on either side of the gateway has the same members as that of the wall between the pilasters and at the jambs, but the profile of the cyma recta is much more salient. All these features are represented by two or three courses which are still in situ. Within the gateway are the two step-like seats and a narrow passage, and then the bases of two piers with engaged column-bases. To the right and left of these are the bases of the columns of the peristyle.
The frieze (D) consists of three bands of ornament below a flat ovolo and a fascia, the lowest band is narrow, and bears carving like a small bay leaf, the next is also narrow, and has a running vine with heart-shaped leaves and six-petalled flowers, the broad band is carved with a rinceau in which the stalks are not unlike acanthus, but in which the grape-leaf and grapes, pomegranates, figs, birds, and various nondescript small flowers appear. The ornament of this frieze is returned for 15 cm. at both ends. The frieze itself is in three pieces which seem to fit together: their combined length is a little greater than the width of the opening of the gate-way.
The trophy was a form of a military monument erected by Greeks and Romans in honor of victory in the battle. In this case, it is suspected that he was put after the battle of Tapsus (46 BCE) and the suicides of Scipio Metellus, Cato the Younger and Juba I, king of Numidia. The trophy was made of bronze, measuring 2.44 meters high and weighing 240 kg and was found in forum of Hippo Regius.
Si is now a deserted ruin. Ancient Seeia was not a town, or a village, like the majority of sites in the Hauran, but an ancient “high place”, or sacred precinct, adorned with temples, enclosed courts, splendid gateways, statues, and monumental inscriptions. On the plateau to the east of the precinct, and upon its slopes, there grew up a small village which exhibits no signs of Christian work, and is probably of the Roman period, or even of the same period as the temples. The architecture here is very simple, and is in a very much ruined condition, but it seems to illustrate all of the more important principles of construction that are characteristic of the Roman and Christian periods in the Hauran. From all that I observed, it is impossible to assign dates to any of these houses. In the valley to the north there are a few ruins of towers which I took to be coeval with the temples, and a great number of tombs, tower-like structures of the early period, and more elaborate constructions of both the Nabataean and the Roman periods.
From the valley, at a point about 300 m. east of the precinct, a paved road, of excellent construction in huge squared blocks, and about 7 m. wide, leads at an easy grade to the easternmost gate of the precinct. The general course of this road and the plan of the precinct and of the terraces about it may be seen on the map at the beginning of this Part. The road passes by the ruins of a bath and of a number of buildings of unknown purpose. At about half its length, it passes between the ruined piers of a fallen arched gateway. It terminates at an enormous pile of debris which represents the ruins of a triple-arched gateway of the Roman period. At this point the ascent is so steep that I cannot but believe that the outer gate, like those within, was approached by steps. Inside the entrance a paved courtyard, about 50 m. long and 19 m. wide, stretches to the westward. On the south of this court rises a retaining wall, 5 m. high, which masks the side of the knoll upon which a small temple stood. This temple was approached by a flight of steps set into the retaining wall and flanked by two niches. On the north is a terrace, 7 m. below the court, which is heaped high with debris in which are many interesting fragments denoting the presence of a buried building· of some kind. The eastern and western limits of this terrace are marked by walls of unusual thickness. This terrace, like all the others to be described, was artificially cut in the slope of the hillside. The western end of this first court is marked by the ruins of a gateway which I have called the Nabataean gate, because all of its details are in the characteristic Oriental style of Si. This structure is almost completely hidden in its own ruins, and the northern, or right hand, half of it is buried in the debris of a building of the Roman period with beautiful and characteristic details of the second century in Syria. The middle court, 50 cm. above the other, completely paved, and about 60 m. long by 23 m. wide, is not on axis with the outer court, but bends toward the north. It is flanked by terraces; one on the south about a metre higher than the pavement and one on the north some 7 m. below. The higher terrace was partly built up on a retaining wall, and is strewn with ruins. At its western end the temple of Dushara was discovered. The lower terrace is filled with masses of fallen building stones, broken statues, and fragmentary inscriptions, and is a promising place for future clearing out.
The end of the middle court is marked by a flight of steps 87 cm. high, and by a fine specimen of highly finished wall with an elaborate gateway in the middle. This is the east wall of the peristyle court in front of the great temple. It had preserved about 1.50 m. of its original height, gateway and all, when we uncovered it. Within the gateway, that is, between the jambs of the portal, are two more steps which raise the pavement of the inner court 1.25 m. above that of the middle court. This inner court with its peristyle I have termed the Theatron, in the light of an inscription in Nabataean which uses this Greek word, given in Nabataean letters, in such a way that it can be applied to nothing else. This court is also slightly off axis with the one which precedes it, it measures about 25 m. north and south and about 21m. east and west, inside the wall. The colonnade occupies three sides of a rectangle of 18 m. by 20 m. in front of the temple. Between the colonnade and the wall are a narrow passage and two steps, like the seats of a theatre, which may have suggested the name Theatron to the builders. The side walls of this enclosure are carried along the sides of the temple, at a distance of about 2.50 m. to enclose a space 12 m. deep in the rear of the temple; this space was also paved.
The magnificent temple wall of highly finished masonry which was disclosed by M. de Vogue and found to be intact to a height of 2 m., the two broad steps below it, the jambs of the portal, the bases of the columns and the bases of statues which he found all in situ, have been broken up to the very foundations and carried away by the stone- breakers since 1900. But these same plunderers, by carrying away much of the debris which filled the temple in 1861, and which M. de Vogue did not attempt to remove, have disclosed a part at least of the plan of the interior from which the rest may be restored, and have brought to light many new and important architectural fragments.
The style and character of the buildings, their present state of preservation, and the probable dates of their erection are to be discussed under the separate descriptions of the various buildings; but a few general remarks on these topics may not be out of place in these introductory paragraphs. The importance of the architectural remains at Si' lies in the fact that the buildings of the precinct here constitute the most important group of religious structures known to have been erected by that important branch of the Aramaean peoples known as the Nabataeans. M. de Vogue published a better preserved temple, of an entirely different plan, but having similar details, which he found at Suweda. A plan and a few fragments of one temple and scanty details of another found at Umm idj-DjimM have already appeared in these publications;1 two temples discovered in the Ledja by these expeditions are to be published in the Part which follows this one. These are the only monuments of Nabataean religious architecture known thus far, and the monuments at Si are the finest of their class. Here we have three temples, two of them of a plan hitherto unknown, the third prostyle tetrastyle. Beside the temples there are two fine gateways in the Nabataean style and one of the Roman period, and a bath that probably belongs to the later date. In the plain below there is a great variety of tomb structures, most of which are Nabataean.
Most of these buildings were designed in a style that borrows little or nothing from the contemporary or earlier Hellenistic architecture of Syria. As stone cutters and masons these builders were unmatched for skill; they placed the arch directly upon the column, being perhaps the first architects to do so. They employed a great variety of profiles in their mouldings, and often embellished them with naturalistic, or conventional, or geometrical, designs of carving; but few of the profiles or of the carved designs are to be found in the Classical architecture of Greece or of Rome. They used the bell, or inverted capital, as a base for columns, and adorned it as the Persians had done. They designed capitals of many varieties, one drawn roughly from the outlines of the Corinthian capital, but very differently treated in detail; another with a gigantic abacus like those found in Petra and in Hegra in Arabia and those recently discovered in Bosra;3 others still, of moulded types with little leaves below the angles of the abacus, resembling only in the faintest degree the capitals of the Classical orders. But stranger still it is to find that these Oriental artists introduced grotesques and naturalistic animal forms into their carving. Human forms with distorted bodies and grinning faces appear among the leafage of some of the capitals, while birds and locusts are found in the foliage of the grape-vines. The grape-vine was the favorite subject for the broader bands of architectural ornament, and so great is the variety of treatment in leaves and fruit that it may be possible to trace a chronological sequence by means of it. But other vines were also popular; for we find the ivy and the convolvulus, and even the thistle, treated as a running ornament. The well-known acanthus, so common in Classical designs, if used at all, does not appear as a familiar plant naturalistically treated, like so many other vegetable forms, but as a conventional ornament with little resemblance either to the plant itself, or to the conventionalized form in which the Greeks and Romans used it. The Corinthian form of capital undoubtedly had long been known in Syria, in the Hellenistic architecture of the three centuries before Christ. We have specimens of it, dating from the second century b. c., in the building erected by John Hyrkanos at Arak il-Emir.1 In this building there are two varieties, one large and having a double row of plain water-leaves, the other small, with a single row of true acanthus. The Nabataean capitals at Si', which follow the Corinthian model to a certain extent, have but one row of leaves, and that a tall one, and the leaves resemble the acanthus more perhaps than those of any other plant.
There are three perfectly distinct periods of building represented in the ruins at Sf, two of which are definitely dated by inscriptions, the third, by unmistakable peculiarities of style. The first is a Nabataean period dated by an inscription which tells us that the temple was begun in the third quarter of the first century before Christ. I believe that some of the fragments here are somewhat older than the earliest date named in the inscription — 33 b. c. - or, in other words, that the inscription does not record the actual foundation of the building. The second period is also devoid of Hellenistic influence, and is dateable within fifty years by means of inscriptions of Agrippa II, i. e. from 50 to circ. 100 a. d. The third period is represented by fragments of architectural details which were certainly executed in the second century after Christ. The three periods would then be roughly speaking,
1st. from 50 b. c. to 50 A. d. ;
2nd. from 50 a. d. to 106 a. d., when Arabia became a Roman province under Trajan;
3rd. from 106 a. d. to the close of the reign of Caracalla in 217 a. d., which marks the end of this particular style in Syria.
There are no evidences of building activity in Si in the later style of the Roman period, or in Christian times; in fact, as we shall see later, the temples appear to have been the particular mark of early Christian violence, perhaps, as M. de Vogue suggests, owing to the activities of Herod and of the presence of inscriptions of that prince in the precinct. It is probable that the place has been deserted since the beginning of the fourth century.
The sculpture portrays the face of a young man barely out of adolescence. His lips were embellished with red copper and it originally had inlaid eyes. The wreath of wild olive suggests that this figure is a victorious athlete, and the form of the bust indicates that it was set atop the pillar of a herm. The precise arrangement and striations of the hair are reminiscent of works by the fifth-century B.C. sculptor Polykleitos, but the melancholy expression and the delicate appearance of the face are characteristic of first-century B.C. Roman creations made in Classical Greek style.
e work is generally known as the "Benevento Head," although this name is based on a misunderstanding that has long since been cleared up: the bronze was found not at Benevento but during archaeological excavations carried out at Herculaneum, also in the Campania region of southern Italy. Presented to the lord of Benevento by Ferdinand II, king of the Two Sicilies, the head was later mistakenly thought to have been discovered at Benevento.
