514 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



and second only to Baalbec in beauty of architecture. In many 

 respects it surpasses them both, and as a perfect specimen of an 

 ancient Grecian city it has no equal. These ruins, says Doctor 

 Tristran, " in number, in beauty of situation, and in isolation, were 

 by far the most striking and interesting I had yet seen in Syria." 

 The later name, Philadelphia, was given to the city by Ptolemy II 

 (Philadelphus), King of Egypt, who rebuilt the city in the third 

 century B. C. Greek immigration flowed into Syria after the con- 

 quest of Alexander the Great. The Greeks gradually extended 

 beyond Jordan, sometimes occupying the old sites and sometimes 

 building new cities, as at Jerash. 



According to Pliny, Gerasa was one of the original 10 cities 

 of the Decapolis. It is mentioned by Ptolemy, Strabo, Pliny, and 

 other Greek and Roman writers, but no details are given of its 

 history. We are informed that it was noted for its men of learning, 

 and that it was the " Alexandria of Decapolis." It does not seem 

 to correspond to any Old Testament site. The Crusaders made a 

 campaign against it, in trying to form an eastern frontier for the 

 Holy Land. 



Exactly how or when the city was destroyed is not known. After 

 going down in the Mohammedan invasion, it was probably left 

 deserted for hundreds of years, because the state of the ruins after 

 700 years points clearly to the action of an earthquake and not 

 the hand of man. An Arabian geographer, at the beginning of the 

 thirteenth century, describes Gerasa as deserted. Hence we have 

 here a Greek or Roman town standing as it was left 700, if not 1,200, 

 years ago. 



High above the Peribolos or Forum, on a rocky knoll, supported 

 and surrounded by a massive substructure, stands the ruin of a great 

 temple, whose superb situation commands the whole town and looks 

 straight north along the colonnaded street. The walls of this tem- 

 ple are 7y 2 feet thick. 



Outside the city, says Doctor Green, there are the remains of a 

 naumachia or theater, for the representation of naval spectacles, 

 consisting of a vast stone reservoir 700 feet by 300 feet, surrounded 

 by tiers of seats and supplied by conduits. 



Not very far off is the site of the great and important city of 

 Rabbath-Ammon, the ancient capital of the Ammonites, who, with 

 the Moabites, are said to have been descended from Lot. These 

 two nations drove out the gigantic aboriginal inhabitants east of 

 the Dead Sea and the Jordan. Rabbath-Ammon is first mentioned 

 in Deuteronomy III, 11, as the place where the " iron bedstead " of 

 the giant King of Bashan was deposited; but it is celebrated chiefly 

 for the siege against it by the Israelites under Joab, when Uriah 

 the Hittite was slain — the blackest spot in David's history. 



