Exploring Pella's Bronze Age Temple Complex

Past Horizons ^ | May 2012 | Stephen J. Bourke

[SunkenCiv]

Pella is located in the eastern foothills of the north Jordan valley, around five kilometres east of the Jordan River in the modern-day Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It overlooks the north/south road that runs up the Jordan Valley, as well as the east/west trade route west down the Jezreel Valley to the coast at Haifa. Verdant agricultural flatlands stretch away to the north of the site, and broken uplands well suited to horticulture rise sharply to the east. The high cone-shaped largely natural hill of Tell Husn dominates the southern approaches to the site.

...

The landscape surrounding the main mound is rich in archaeological remains stretching back deep into the Palaeolithic period. The first trace of hominid occupation dates from the Lower Palaeolithic, around 250,000 years ago. Survey and excavation in the Wadi Hammeh, five kilometres north of the main mound, have recorded a long sequence of Middle (80,000-40,000) and Upper (35,000-20,000) Palaeolithic campsites in the hills surrounding Pella. The famous Epipalaeolithic village site of Wadi Hammeh 27 (14,000 years old) marks the first permanent settlement in the region. Thereafter the landscape gradually begins to fill, with small Neolithic villages, walled Bronze and Iron Age settlements, Hellenistic and Roman villas, and Byzantine wine and olive production sites the dominant features. Cemeteries of all periods dot the landscape, occasionally free-standing and stone-built, but mostly cut into the flanks of the exposed hillsides. By the late Byzantine period (ca. 550 AD) the landscape must have been very densely occupied and intensively farmed.

[SunkenCiv]

Migdol Temple, looking south east

[VanShuyten]

For reading later

[SunkenCiv]

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A window into the past. /rimshot! To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SatinDoll]

“...By the late Byzantine period (ca. 550 AD)...”

EXCUSE ME!

Byzantium: Roman Emperor Diocletian splits imperial administration between east and west, 285 AD - Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Turks, 1453 AD.

[SunkenCiv]

Ironically, it’s a little late to bring that up. ;’)

[blueunicorn6]

I like the sunken livingroom and the river rock fireplace, but those owners are crazy if the think I’m going to pay $250,000 for a two bedroom house.

[Verginius Rufus]

It’s “Late Byzantine” for that area, since the area was overrun by the Arabs in the 630s.

[colorado tanker]

After Alexander’s conquests, Pella was re-founded as a Greek city and became a member of the Decapolis. In the Roman period, the city was re-built along Roman lines and became an important center of Greco-Roman influence on the Eastern frontier. It later became a Christian center. Not long after the Arab conquest, the city was destroyed by an earthquake.

[what's up]

Some think Pella was the city to which the Jewish christians fled prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.

If so, they apparently took Jesus warnings in Mark 13 to heart.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!