Sculptural fragments at Umm Jimal shed light on ancient Arab tribes, trade routes

AMMAN – According to the German archaeologist Thomas Weber, the sculptural fragments of Umm Jimal may be associated with an indigenous local sanctuary. 

Umm Jamal is a significant site near Mafraq established by the Nabataeans and occupied by Romans and Byzantines. 

The so-called Nabataean temple, located south of the actual find spot of the fragments, might connect them, but the chronological attribution of the extant building to the pre-provincial period has been questioned by De Veaux and Parker. 

"Apart from the wheel block, several elements studied by the authors of the 2016 survey attest to the origins of the Umm Jimal chariot group. 

One intact pillar carrying a bilingual Semitic-Greek ex-voto inscription in honour of Dushara A‘rra certainly supported one of the Nikai of which fragments survive in Irbid (and Mafraq)," said Weber, adding that the head of one of these figures was sold by the inhabitant of the village to a foreign tourist several decades ago

“The torso of one of the animal tamers of the Umm Jimal monument is stored together with other minor fragments at the Department of Antiquities at Mafraq,” Weber underlined. 

Weber added that the previously known fragment of the Umm Jimal chariot group may be described as follows: Block of a Chariot Wheel; Pillar dedicated by Masechos; Pillar with a Greek dedication commemorating the pavement of a place; Torso of a Nike; Head of a Nike; Torso of an animal tamer; Fragment of a horse; Base of a squatting eagle and small fragment of drapery.

The chariot monument from Umm Jimal is, at the present, the only statuary group of this genre found in the southern plain of Hauran on the territory of the modern Jordan. 

"This area stood from the 1st century BC until the year AD 106 under Nabatean influence. The invocation of Dusares on the pillar which carried one of the Nikai-statues leaves little doubt that the statuary group corresponded to the religious beliefs and the aesthetics of the local Arab tribes, who monitored the trade routes between wadi Sirhan and Damascus either as Bedouin in the desert areas or as farmers on the fertile slopes of the Mons Alsadamus," Weber underlined, 

The archaeologist added that Arab tribesmen were the heirs of the late Hellenistic artistic culture after the decline of the leading oriental centres such as Seleucid Antioch or Ptolemaic Alexandria. 

Furthermore, the ancient southern Syrian regions of Batanea, Auranitis, Trachon, Gaulanitis and the Syrian Decapolis were subject of turmoil and struggle between the adversaries of local kingdoms of the Nabataean and Herodian dynasties, with predominance oscillating between them. 

"The local inhabitants, however, developed their own artistic expression in sculpture and architecture using the dark indigenous basalt and adopting elements of Greco-Roman art in a quite stereotypical manner," Weber explained. 

He noted that iconographic types such as the gliding Nikai holding wreaths cannot explained exclusively by Herodian influence. 

Nor has the sculpture anything to do with Nabatean art as known from the lavish tomb façades at Petra, the professor stressed, noting that the canon of sculptural types such as that of Athena-Allat, the chariots, and the Victories have a limited scale of iconographic variation and are reproduced in only slightly altered sculptural details in large numbers. 

"It is still difficult to determine whether these different sculptural styles reflect a chronological development or differences in regional schools of craftsmanship," Weber said,

Umm Jimal lies at the funnel-shaped confluent entry of Wadi Sirhan which connects the coastal line of the Bilad Al-Sham with the Arabian Peninsula. In this geographically privileged position, the settlement was of essential importance for regional trade between the incense country of Arabia Felix and the commercial centres in Syria, Weber said. 

The archaeologist noted that this gathering place of camel caravans was connected in many ways to the later provincial capital Busra eski-Sham in Syria. 

The population of this entire region consisted, on the one hand, of wealthy farmers on the fertile western slopes of the Jabel Arab and the rich Batanaea plain and, on the other hand of nomads in the basaltic desert al-Harra. Both demographic groups were organised in the tribal system of Aramaic origin. In the accounts of Flavius Josephus these people were predominantly named “Arabs”.