â– MlfiTilllPe
Palace mirrored in tlie past
ABRAHAM RABINOVICH THE JERUSALEM POST
Ehud Nt'tzi'r has built a ca-rwr on mirages, conjuring up outlines of palaces, swimming pools and gardens in dry-as-dust desert where King Herod once built pleasure retreats at Jericho, Masada and elsewhere.
When the Jemsalem archeol-ogist visited the well-presei-ved ii'mains of an ancient building in Jordan last year, his gaze rested not only on the structure itself - apjjarently built by a wealthy Jew 2,200 years ago -but on a broad circular area aitjund it wheii' an artificial lake had once existed.
There was more to this juxtaposition, he felt, than immediately met the t?ye.
The site, in a secluded valley midway Ix'tween Jericho and Amman known ;ls Wadi Sir, is called hxally (Jasr el-Alxxl CCastle of tJie Slavi'"). 'Hie stniduix' is pjirt of an estate mentione<l by Josepbus as having IxK'n built in the fii-st half of the second centui^ BCE by a wealthy Jew named Hyrcanus whos<' family had resided east of the river for generations.
"i ie al.so entted a sti-ong castle and built it entin'ly of white stone, to the wry nuif" wn)te Jost^phus, "and had animals of prodigious magnitude ujxm it. I Ie also dix'w around it a great and diH'p canal of watei'. Moii-over, he built cx)Uils of greater magnitude than ordi-naiy which he adorned with va.st-h' lai-ge ganlens."
The animals an- still there and they ail' indeed pnxligious - lai'ge reliefs, twice life-size, of lions, panthers and eagles on all four exterior walls.
The structure was partially restored by French archeologists in the 1980s and it is, in Mr. N'elzer's words, "the most striking 1 lellenistic monument which has survived on either side of tlie Jordan."
The siting of the magnificent tokimned building on a small i.s-lanfi in the middle of an artificial lake i-eflected a high degree of aesthetic stuisibility, not to men-tion a lot of money. Hut it struck Mr. N'etzer afU'r he ix'tumiKl fnmi Joidan that that aesthetic .st?n.si-l)ilit> ina\- have Ix'en even keen-,.|-than he fil-Ht imagined.
it was clear," he says, "that tl,c building and the lake were ,,nc unit. You could get to the building only by rowing across the water. I kept thinking about
it and it occun-ed to me that the architect may have been playing with the idea of the building's reflection in the water."
Mr. Netzer, who was himself a practicing architotl befoi-e taking up archeology, had a mtxiel of the site built in Jemsalem. A mirror sei-ved as the i-eflecting lake surface. "When I saw it my mouth fell open," he says.
"Whoever planned this building knew from the start that he wanted a play of reflections; it wasn't just an accidental byproduct. I had thought that the building's being set back somewhat on the island might rc-duce the reflection but we see from the model that it doesn't. That's the reason for the lai'ge animal reliefs on all four sides. That's veiy unusual. Reliefs, when they existed, were usually only on the faaide. Here they are reflected in the water on all sides as you approach."
The sophistication of the concept may stem from Alexandria, which was the thriving cultural center of the region. We know from Josephus that Hyrcanus had spent considerable time there and eitlier he or his architect may have been inspiixni by the reflection of Alexandrian villas on the city's waterfront.
In tlie pswt, Uie site was tliought to have been a fortress, temple, maiLsoleum or palace. The I'Vench archeologists who partially re-storc-d the struclurc desaibed it as a ix'sidential villa.
Mr. Nether Ixdieves it was something even moif etheival -a plea-suiv piivilion. He had encountered .something of tlie .soil at Heitxlion, one of Henxi's palaces which Mr. Kelzer excavated. 'Hieix* Uk), on a much smaller saile, a piivilion had IxH'n built in the middle of a large ixx)l. As at Qasr el-Abed, guesLs to a reception would have been n)wed out
The French team did not re-stoix' the collap.scKl upp<>r stoiy of the two-story building but assumed that its layout was more or U^s like tlie bottom floor which had a series of ixx)ms. Thai would follow if the building were indeed a residential villa but Netzer believes that the estate manor house was on the "mainland," either a site on the lakeshore, where remains of an oncient structure can still be seen, or beneath the adjacent village of haq el Amir.
"The pavilion's sole function," says Mr. Netzer, "within the framework of a larger palatial estate, was to provide lavish entertainment." The reception hall on the upper floor, he believes, was probably similar to the one he had excavated in Herod's winter palace in Jericho. "The roof was probably flat in order to serve as an observation deck offering an excellent view of the surrounding lake, gardens and the superb landscape." The island pavilion itself, and its reflection in the water, would have been enjoyed from a kilometre-long promenade ringing the lake. "Anyone observing the pavilion's reflection might have gained the impression of a boat floating in the water."
Hyrcanus was to the manner Ixim. His grandfather, Tuvia, was a priest in Jerusalem who owned land in Transjordan. Tuvia's son, Joseph, augmented the family wealth by becoming a tax farmer - read collector - for the Egyptian royal house in Syria, Phoenicia and Samaria. It was a position he purchased and he maintained it by generous gifts to those in positions of influentx; at the Egyptian tx)urt.
He begat seven sons by one wife and Hyixainus by another in sliulliiig ciix-umsUmces descrilx.'d by Josephus. It seems that Joseph had accompanied his bix)tlier, Solymius, to Alexandria with Solymius' daughter in oixler to find her a husband from among the Jewish elite there.
"When Joseph was dining with the king a beautiful dancing girl came into the banquet mom and Joseph, having fallen in love with her, told his brother of this and lx?gged him, since the Jews were prevented by law from having in-teixx)urse with a foreign woman, to aid in concealing his sin and do him a good sei-vice by making it possible for him to satisfy his desiixv
"Thereupon his brother, gladly undertaking to be of service, beautified his own daughter and brought her to him by night to sleep with him. But Joseph in his di-unken state did not know how mattere really were and so he had intercourse with his brother's daughter. When this had happened several times he fell still more violently in love with her. He then told his brother that he was risking his life for a dancer
whom the king would perhaps not allow him to have. But his brother urged him not to be anxious, telling him to eryoy without fear the woman whom he loved and to make her his wife; and he revealed the truth to him, how he had chosen to dishonor his own daughter rather than see him fall into disgrace. And so Joseph, commending him for his brotherly love, married his daughter and by her begot a son named Hyrcanus."
The boy turned out to be special. Joseph had sent his other sons to famous teachers to learn "which of them was naturally disposed to virtue." All returned "foolish and ignorant." Joseph sent Hyrcanus, the youngest, into the desert on a test of character - "a two-day journey into the wilderness to sow the ground, giving him 300 yoke of oxen but hiding the yokestraps."
Discovering his handicap upon aniving at his destination, Hyrcanus ignored the advice of the veteran mule drivers to send men back for the straps. He was not going to call on daddy. Instead, he slaughtered 10 oxen, distributed the meat among his men, and cut up the hides to make straps. Joseph was delighted at his son's intelligence and initiative.
With the death of Joseph, Hyi-canus's brothers and their followers warred against him and his followers. "Hyrcanus therefore gave up his intention of returning to Jerusalem and settled in the country acrass the Jordan where he tx)ntinually waiTed on the Arabs [presumably Bedouin) until he killed many of them and took many captive. And he built a strong fortress which was constructed entirely of white .stone up to the very nwf... And he named it Tyre."
Aft.er seven yeai-s, the shift-ing power politics of the region bix)ught the area under the con-Ux)l of a Seleucid king, Antiochus, in Damascus - father of the king against whom the Hasmoneans would revolt.
"Fearing that he might be cjip-tured by him and punished for what he had done to the Arabs I Hyrcanus) ended his life by his own hand and all his property was seized by Antiochus."
Mr. Netzer believes that restoration of the lake - with note taken of its role as a reflecting surface for an ancient pleasure pavilion - would add to the attraction of one of Jordan's impoiliint tourist sites. .
Western
Jewish
Bulletin
Vil.LXIV.Ne.4S
14.1997
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