Finding Artemis

     The most exciting find of this particular dig season was a life size statue of Artemis, found up on Area A. She had been lying just under the surface of the dirt, and was actually discovered by a couple of local workers who had been taking a break over where she was found. One of the younger guys who was sitting  on some big rocks over in an area where no one was digging (they were all chatting and drinking their noonday glasses of hot tea), noticed a lump in the dirt. Jumping down off the rock to take a closer look, he brushed some of the dirt away to find this gleaming white marble statue. Excitedly he started calling out to everybody, "Come look! Come look!" Of course J was estatic! We all were! There had been evidence on the coins minted at Abila that there had once stood a Roman temple at this site, but no one had as yet any evidence of where that temple might have stood, or to whom it might have been dedicated. Now it seemed certain that Area A, which was the highest point of Abila, and thus an obvious choice for a temple, was most likely the site of the temple depicted on the the back side of many of the coins, and that Artemis was the city's honored deity. Of course, the images of Athena (probably to pay homage to Athens) and Tyche (the goddess of fortune, who appears more often on Decapolis coins than any other deity) both appear on coins minted at Abila, with Herakles being the male god depicted most often. It appeared that he was the chief god of Abila, as well as of many other Decapolis cities, especially Philadelphia (or modern day Amman), where a temple to Herakles had been excavated and partially restored up on the city's citadel. But to find that there might have been a chief goddess worshipped at the temple of Abila was unbelievably exciting!

     The Greek god Herakles was known to the Romans as Hercules, probably the most famous hero of Greek mythology, idealized for his courage, his strength, and his skill in the face of adversity. He was called "the defender of the earth," receiving very little help from the gods, nor seeking the glory, fame, power, or eventual immortality that he acquired. He did what he did for one reason only, not because he wanted to (at first he refuses his labors), but because it is a divine command!  He was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman. Out of his great love for Herakles (Hera + Kleos: glory), Zeus promises to make him immortal, but in order to please his wife, Hera, he agrees that his son will have to perform 12 labors for King Eyrystheus of Tiryns, doing whatever he commands. For eight years he labors, until his 11th request from the King finds him taking on the task of holding up the world for Atlas, who has asked him to do so temporarily, but then leaves him with the awesome burden. His 12th and final labor takes him into the Underworld, a kingdom ruled by Hades. For this task he is given help by Hermes, the wayfinder, who leads the shades of the dead down into the Underworld, and thus must lead Herakles. Of course, Hades will only let Herakles pass through if he does him a favor, which he does in order to complete his 12th and final labor for the King. Eventually, Herakles goes on to live his life and have many more adventures. Unfortunately, many years later, when Herakles' wife gives him a tunic laced in a poison that is supposed to make him love only her (so Herakles' enemies have treacherously led her to believe), the heat from his body activates the poison, causing the tunic to stick to his skin and burn it. In agony he tears off the tunic, tearing his skin off as well. He is in such excruciating pain that only death will relieve him, and so he builds a funeral pyre, lays down on it, and waits until someone happens by who agrees to light the pyre for him. However, just as the torch touches the wood, a bolt of lightening flashes in the sky. A cloud immediately descends into the roaring heap of flames, envelopes Herakles, and carries him up to Mt. Olympus. Zeus has kept his promise, and Herakles is made immortal.
     What's intersting about this story is that it contains elements that can be found in both the Old and New Testament stories. (And of course most readers of the Bible know that Paul addressed a crowd in Athens, explaining to them the meaning behind their own statue to an unnamed god, a god that, once explained to them as representing Jesus Christ, many pagans were poised to accept. Their own mythologies, stories that reflected their spiritual foundations, had prepared their hearts and their minds to believe that such a God as Christ could indeed come in the flesh in order to save mankind, and that he could be born of a mortal woman!) What's interesting about the story of Heracles/Hercules is that most likely he existed in a matriarchal culture. The Hebrew Bible is written to address a very patriarchal culture, and by the time of the New Testament, matriarchal cultures had all but been demoted or swallowed up. And while both Jewish and Christian theologians point out that God is formless, neither male or female (and even God says, "I am that I am"), in truth, we have never been able to speak about God without using symbols and images. We have no other way of relating to the Divine, and while knowing that every image we do use to describe the Divine is transcended by the Divine, we have mostly created male forms, used male language, and male metaphors. Thus we have embedded into our belief system that God is really male, leaving us with no Divine Feminine imagery.

     Enter Artemis, the archer goddess (known as Diana to the Romans), an immortal child of Zeus. She was the twin of Apollo, the god of prophecy, medicine, archery, and music, and later the god of the sun. Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, and later became goddess of the moon. It is known that she was worshipped in Western Asia Minor (the temple to Artemis in Ephesus, Turkey was one of the Seven Wonders of the World), as a goddess of fertility, and in Minoan Crete as Mother Earth. Homer called her "the Mistress of Wild Animals," and in one of his Hymns he says she loved the woods and the wild chase over the mountains. During the Hellenistic period her character was altered so that she became known as the goddess of hunting and nature, and also the protectress of youth. She was a maiden goddess to whom young girls on their wedding day often offered a lock of their hair or beloved toys. As she was the goddess of nature her sanctuaries were in plains, on mountains, near springs and rivers, and even near coasts and capes. Her most beloved domestic animals were the dog, the goat, the hare, and especially the deer, while among the wild animals she especially loved the bear, the boar, the lion, and the wolf. It is said that in one of the parks dedicated to Artemis that the wild and domestic animals lived together in perfect peace. She herself was carefree and wild.
     While myths are the essence of religion, Carl Jung (and later, Joseph Campbell) said that they were part of a universal collective unconscious. I had studied this idea all throughout graduate school, writing several papers on it, as I personally tested the various mythological systems I had been taught were wrong. I had become extremely interested in the idea of the Divine Feminine, and once I converted to Christianity I  wondered how the feminine in such a dominant patriarchal theological system could possibly still be manifest.  Creation, according to the Greeks, moved from a mother-dominated society, in which the most important divinities were female, to a father-dominated society, in which the most important divinities were male. Gaea, who is Mother Earth, was the first Great Goddess. The people who were living in Greece when the Bronze Age tribes invaded the land, worshipped the Great Goddess because they were farmers, and the fertility of the earth, as well as their ability to have enough children to assure the continuity of their clan, was of prime importance to them. Gaea's daughter, Rhea (or Cybele) was also known as Mother Earth, but by the third generation of gods, Zeus, a male god, becomes the dominate deity (with Hera, Demeter, and Hestia still looked to as beloved goddesses). Artemis, who is fourth generation, is still venerated as Mother Earth in some areas, but Apollo, who is her twin and originally her equal, wins out over her in most places, becoming god of the sun. She later becomes goddess of the moon, or of deep intuition. And this is what was getting to me. To the Greeks, logic and reasoning become elevated, associated with education and male "thinking," while intuition, connected to the feminine aspect, gets demoted in importance (feelings cannot be trusted), and thus another important separation occurs within the Divine, and within mankind.

     Muslims (who strongly believe that God is male, and who operate within a very strict patriarchal society), refuse to allow any images of God or of man, thus when we found Artemis, it was without her head. During the Islamic Period, not only had statues been decapitated, but lots of other artwork had also been destroyed in order to maintain a strict adherence to their religious law concerning graven images. But Christians had already replaced her, and the Trinity was all male. However, the Greeks did ultimately preserve one feminine aspect of the Divine which has lasted in our texts, if nowhere else, and that was Sophia, or Wisdom. Unfortunately, the wise woman has become a crone in a society that worships youth. One book that has been published since my last visit to Jordan, Turkey or Greece, is a Christian work of fiction that has dared to put the feminine (and the non-white, non westerner) back into God. William Paul Young's The Shack not only portrays God (the Father) as a woman, but she's a big jocular black woman! And Jesus, who has never been portrayed as being overly masculine (as a child I took issue with his Renaissance portrait as being far too effeminate for a carpenter, but who has always been much more nurturing and forgiving than His Father--two aspects of the same God), is portrayed as a Jewish/Arab hippy type guy who is very easy to hang with and talk to, while Young's portrayal of the Holy Spirit is something more ethereal (and somewhat Oriental), something more celestial, a spirit being who lives in wonder, and fun, and creativity, who lives in a state of childlikeness. And together they make up three aspects of God, the masculine, the feminine, and the genderless child, touching the hearts of millions of readers who, like me, have been searching for this lost aspect of the Divine. This was what Artemis meant to me. Losing that wild, carefree, feminine, childlike aspect of the Divine meant losing a part of God. But she wasn't lost. She had been lying there just under the dirt, barely visible, but there just the same. I'm not sure that anyone else, including J, felt as deeply about her reappearance as I did, but Artemis, as a symbol for the divine goddess, would follow me for years to come.

Archaeological Finds

     Everyone you talk to who knows you dig always asks the inevitable question: "Have you ever found anything really exciting?" For most archaeologists the answer to this perpetual question usually goes something like this: Well, it depends on what you mean by exciting!" Of course the archaeologist can bet that the questioner most often has no idea what he or she means, but is hoping that the archaeologist will launch into a diatribe about some really fascinating find that will feed the imagination of the entire audience (whether it be an audience of one or one hundred). But let me tell you, this rarely happens! And when those really exciting finds are unearthed, it usually makes news headlines, and if you have any serious interest in archaeology, you will have already read about it (or will be seeing it soon on the History Channel!). Most Near East archaeologists are digging up ancient towns and cities, or fortresses and outposts, and while they are hoping to uncover some extremely important ancient text, or proof of some prominent ancient figure's existence, the day-to-day finds, while fascinating in every respect to the archaeologist, are often rather mundane and uninteresting to the average untrained individual. However, what the archaeologist learns to do most expertly (often in order to keep popular interest and therefore funding), is to tell stories of the ancient past that will bring those mundane objects to life! After all, it is the archaeologist's own vivid imagination, combined with his love of the past that keeps him returning to the field every season (either that, or he wants to escape the doldrums of academia, or both, more likely!).

     J was one of those professors who could make history pop off the page and literally walk across the room and breathe down your neck! With each power point presentation (which eventually replaced his thousands of slides, though unbelievably it still hasn't as yet for those archaeology dinosaurs!), he could mesmerize you with stories of horrific battles that left thousands lying slaughtered across fields, bloodying up the ground as their spears or hatchets, or swords and horses lay nearby; or of insane rulers who had rebellious or maybe even unsuspecting citizens beheaded, and with their heads still recognizable by their fearful eyes bulging out from their faces and with their hair all askew, had them mounted on tall spikes and displayed on city gates and walls, or lined up along roads into their cities; or of subjects being publicly burned, screaming as the flames engulfed them, scorching the flesh from their feet and legs before moving up the rest of their bodies; or of other powerful, yet brutal men pushing their personal attendants off of high cliffs, watching and listening as their bodies smashed on the rocks below, sometimes for no other reason than the pure sadistic pleasure of it; or stories of stronger men who were used as sport in the arena against wild beasts who would claw them to death and then shred them to pieces before cheering crowds of spectators. But then he could just as equally mesmerize you with stories of gods and saints, and elders and holy men who lived humbly and righteously, who sometimes gave up their lives, believing in something so strongly that nothing of this earthly existence mattered. He could bring to life all the ancient settings of the earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, or the later civilizations of Greece and Rome, where the beginnings of western culture grew in splendor and magnificence.

     I wanted to catch some of that fever! I was digging up potsherds from the Bronze Age like they were candy. I was finding rims and handles, along with other pieces of pottery, all parts of cups and plates and bowls and storage jars, kitchen items I pictured women from the time of Moses using in their small houses to feed their families. I was trying desperately to imagine a time I had read about as a kid studying my bible correspondence lessons, a time in northern Jordan before Abila became a great Roman city, when life was more agrarian, more pastoral, much more like it was in the present day. A time when the God of the Old Testament was revealing Himself to individuals, to men who were eventually given the Ten Commandments and who entered into a covenant with Him that required so much duty and strict attention to detail that they would certainly fall short. Men so carnal in nature that they had to be told not to have sex with the beasts in their fields! Men who were firing pottery in kilns so that their wives could serve them meat and wine before lying down with them for comfort and warmth, and maybe even for love if they were lucky! I was falling in love with the Bronze Age in my imagination. And when I visited the museum of history in Amman I took more pictures of Bronze Age pottery than of anything else. While my home back in the states already housed a collection of potsherds that I had until now cared little about, I was beginning to connect to people of the ancient past because I personally had uncovered and then touched a piece of something well over a thousand years old! And I, too, became excited!

   

Nights at Abila

     Nights were my favorite times at Abila, nights during the work week. It was at that time when the whole business of the day had ended, when I felt like I had made it through yet again, that I could finally relax!  While most of the time I ended up collapsing from pure exhaustion into the fold up chair I had brought with me from the states, it was still a good feeling sometimes, which really surprised me. There would be about an hour from around 9:00 when the sun had started to set, until around 10:00 before going to bed that I could just sit and stare up at the stars. Since there were no street lights or outside lights of any kind, it would get dark enough to see the most amazing display of God's handiwork. It was then in the quiet that I would think about how enormous the universe is, and how insignificant we all would be in it if we didn't have some purpose, some reason, some design. It is especially easy to think about God when you are in a strange land far away from home. Every single night, without fail, I would hear the muezzin's call to prayer made from the mosque a few miles away in the nearest village of Hartha. It would be the last call to prayer before dawn, when I would hear it again as I got up, and I knew that every Muslim was kneeling down before God, being mindful of what He had done for them, and how He had provided for them. Hearing the calls five times a day not only kept the Muslims mindful of God (or Allah, as they call Him), but it kept me mindful of Him too. A devout Muslim must plan his life around prayer, being careful not to be caught out somewhere and not able to stop what he is doing and make ablutions and pray. Five times a day-- at dawn, at noon, in the afternoon, at sunset, and at nightfall, a Muslim knows that prayer must take priority over non-obligatory matters. They begin with the prayer, "God is most great." In Arabic it is Alla lu Akbar, and then saying Ashadu anna la ilaha illa Allah, meaning "I bear witness there is no god but God." The ritual prayer continues, and its melodic rhythm becomes enchanting to hear, especially from a distance. From where I sat at night, it seemed like God Himself was calling me to prayer! "Come to prayer!" "Come to well being." "Prayer is better than sleep." More of the ritual prayer, only it was being spoken in Arabic. 
     I felt like I had been searching out God my whole life. When I was around two years old, my  parents joined a Sabbatarian church, a church that put more emphasis on works than on grace. When I was school age I often told people that I was Jewish, as it was easier than explaining what I knew they would never understand. It was a religious view that taught me a strict meaning of the observance of the Sabbath, and of a cycle of Holy days that not only called to mind a people's past, but signified a greater future when God would return to establish His Kingdom. It taught me that Christmas and Easter, seeped in pagan traditions, were as heretical to observe as going to church on Sunday. It taught me that I must obey strict Old Testament dietary laws against eating unclean meats (which helped to better appreciate the Muslim edict against eating pork), and laws about tithing would teach me how to go without, trusting more in God (another Muslim requirement is that they give alms to the poor). These teachings I took very much to heart, all the while believing that everyone else was wrong. At age eighteen, I quit. What I decided to do then was, if not totally disregard, then at least call into question everything I had been taught. Thus began a long spiritual journey of discovery, one in which I truly believe God led me along. As a child I had learned to pray, and as a family we often prayed together on Friday nights, after the Sabbath had begun. And like most families did during the 1960s, we  made it a point to pray before every meal, thanking God for what he had provided. And so I grew up praying. I kept it up off and on in my teens and twenties, but eventually I got to where I calIed on God only when I was in distress, and even then I often forgot. I guess it was when I became a practicing pagan, more or less, that I started talking to God again, and then really trying to listen back. I began meditating, until eventually I began to hear and actually feel God's presence. And then talking with God became something I virtually did all day long. That is until I converted to Christianity, joined a conservative church, and found myself back in a box, or so I felt. So many of my prayers became prayers of desperation once again, only this time I was begging God not to let go of me, all the while fearing that I would struggle to get free of Him, if this in fact was Him, a notion I often regretted.  I had begged God to show me who He was, not who other people thought He was, or professed Him to be. Did that have anything to do with how I ended up here? In Jordan? With J? Without my daughter? But honestly, how does one learn to see the true face of God? Does God Himself not show you all of His faces until it is you that you see more honestly? Will He not take you behind every nook and cranny of yourself until you must stand absolutely naked in front of Him with no illusions of anything. Islam was another face of God. Islam, with its 99 names for God (or rather for His attributes); Islam, with its religious divisions (Sunni, Shi' ite, and Sufi); and Islam, with all its strict regulations rolled into its more appealing aspects. I was yet again seeing God, only in a different light. And so for that night, and every night while I sat under the stars of the Jordanian skies, I would often hear God's voice saying to me, "Where ever you are, there I also shall be." God was everywhere, and He was still calling all of His children to come pray, come into well being. Don't sleep; seek Me. The lesson I was learning was that I would find God even in the most barren of places. And so it was that I would indeed need this lesson of the dessert later on when I was back at home, back where I was comfortable. Back where I would not so clearly hear the call to prayer.