Jordan Tours and News

 AMMAN — Scholars were unsure about the exact foundation date of the four-kilometre-long city wall in Jerash (ancient Gerasa), noted an Australian archaeology professor.

 AMMAN — Marble statues found in 2017 probably decorated the Great Eastern Baths in Jerash, said a German scholar.

 AMMAN — The Kingdom’s tourism revenue in the first seven months of 2019 went up by 8.6 per cent to $3.2 billion, compared with the January-July period of 2018 that registered $2.95 billion, the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) announced on Wednesday.

 AMMAN — Tucked away in a hidden corner of Jabal Amman, the Amman Design Week’s Crafts District offered its visitors design installations, exhibitions, shops, and a cultural programme in the Kabariti Village.

 AMMAN — International agreements to protect and promote intangible cultural heritage (ICH) have only recently become an incentive for Jordan, according to a Jordanian expert.

 AMMAN — Iron Age imports from Egypt, Cyprus, Phoenicia, Syria and Assyria indicate complex economic and political relations between Moab and the major powers in the region, according to a Canadian scholar.

 AMMAN — Official statistics issued by the Airport International Group revealed that Queen Alia International Airport (QAIA) received 1,053,225 passengers (PAX) during August 2019, indicating a 5.1 per cent surge set against the same month last year.

 AMMAN — Ancient inscriptions found in the Eastern Desert reveal relations between Nabateans and bedouin tribes and depict daily life as well as major political events, wars and revolts, said a Jordanian scholar.

 AMMAN — Khirbet Ataruz, located around 30 kilometres southwest of Madaba, represented an early Iron Age II temple with two building phases, according to a US archaeologist.

 AMMAN — Sales of a unified ticket designated for tourist areas in Jordan have increased during the first eight months of this year, according to Tourism Ministry official figures.

 AMMAN — In the Mamluk period, some of the most politically dangerous persons went to Karak Castle, said an American scholar.

 AMMAN — For the first time since 2007, Royal Jordanian (RJ) registered JD3.4 million profit from continuing operations in the first half of 2019 against JD11.1 million loss for the same period in 2018 and a net profit of JD1.5 million, according to RJ CEO Stefan Pichler.

 AMMAN — European interest in cartography of the Levant dates back to at least the 16th century, according to a Swiss researcher.

 AMMAN — The Azraq region appears to have been a magnet for human settlement in the Epipalaeolithic period, which dates back 20,000 to 10,000 years.

 AMMAN — An intricate mosaic medallion and marble capitals unearthed in a building in Shuqayra Al Gharbiyya, near Karak, speak to the wealth of the building’s original inhabitants, a Jordanian scholar recently told The Jordan Times.

 AMMAN — The settlement in Jerash (Gerasa) during the Middle Islamic period was much more extensive and complex than hitherto thought, said a Danish archaeologist.

 AMMAN — A total of 657,918 tourists of various nationalities have visited Petra in the first eight months of 2019, compared with 507,299 visitors during the same period of 2018, marking a 30 per cent increase.

 AMMAN — The early adaption of an ancient heating system by the Nabataeans point to an outward-facing society, according to a Canadian archaeologist.

 AMMAN — Middle Islamic pottery is an understudied subject and until recently no comprehensive typology existed for pottery from this period, according to an American archaeologist.

 AMMAN — The remnants of 14,000-year-old bread were found at an archaeological site called Shubayqa 1 site in north-eastern Jordan.

 AMMAN — Jordan has an abundance of sites filled with Roman wall paintings adorning temples and necropolises, but paintings from later periods are often only found in fragments, according to a Polish conservator.

 AMMAN — Khirbet Al Umari is an archaeological site, located 25km southeast of Azraq. It was already in a sadly ruined state when famous archaeologist Nelson Glueck visited it in the 1940s, and was severely disturbed in more recent years by looting and vandalism, noted a Dutch archaeologist.

 AMMAN — Khirbet Jazzir, some four kilometres southwest from Salt, was mentioned in scholarly literature as biblical site Jazer, according to a German archaeologist.

 AMMAN — Deputising for His Majesty King Abdullah, Prime Minister Omar Razzaz on Thursday inaugurated the 34th Jerash Festival for Culture and Arts, according to the Jordan News Agency, Petra.

 AMMAN — Excavations at a Late Neolithic site in north-western Jordan revealed the existence of an agrarian society in which pottery held a key role, a Canadian archaeologist has said.

 AMMAN — An inscription known as Mesha Stele or Mesha Inscription indicates that in the ancient town of Altaruz, located some 30 kilometres southwest of Madaba, Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, was worshipped.

 AMMAN — A Nubian Nightjar bird was spotted late last month nesting for the first time in Fifa Nature Reserve (FNR), the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN) said on Wednesday.

 AMMAN — Even in ancient times, people already had an effect on the environment by cutting wood for fires and by letting goats and sheep graze around the villages, which caused erosion of the landscape, said an archaeologist specialising in the topic.

 AMMAN — Time has always preoccupied humans, and in order to organise daily life, ancient civilisations constructed different devices to measure time, said a Jordanian scholar.

 AMMAN — Deputising for Her Majesty Queen Rania, Minister of Social Development Basma Ishaqat on Wednesday inaugurated the Bint Bladi Expo in support of productive Jordanian women.