"Until the 1980s, the Roman frontier in modern Jordan was among the least studied of the empire’s far-flung border regions. From 1980 until 1989, the Limes Arabicus Project investigated the frontier east of the Dead Sea. Excavation focused on the late Roman legionary fortress of el-Lejjun as well as soundings of four smaller but contemporaneous forts. The project’s regional survey recorded over five hundred other archaeological sites in the area, dating from the Paleolithic to the Late Islamic periods." Source: "The Roman Frontier in Central Jordan, Final Report of the Limes Arabicus Project," 1980-1989, Harvard University Press.
"This frontier, known as the LimesArabicus, spanned more than 1,300 kilometers from northern Syria to southern Palestine and the edges of the Arabian Peninsula. Recent research and excavations have done much to augment scholarly knowledge of this frontier, which served as the south-eastern defense of the Roman Empire for over six centuries, until it was eventually overrun by the Arab Muslim conquerors in the 630s. This frontier consisted not only—nor even primarily—of fortifications and watchtowers, but also of major nomadic tribal confederations, allied to Rome, which patrolled the desert and ensured the security of the eastern provinces by exercising control over nomadic movements both within and, to a certain degree, beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire." Source: Ballandalus.
"Qasr Bshir [aka Mobene] belongs to the chain of forts and watchtowers that is known as the Limes Arabicus and was meant to protect the province of Arabia against roaming desert nomads. They were not extremely dangerous or exceptionally violent, but their dromedaries made them swift, and if trouble arose, they could pillage large parts of the Roman countryside. The Limes Arabicus had to counter this threat, and Mobene was one of the fortifications." Source: Livius.
Note: According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, the term limes originated "as a surveyor's term for the path that simultaneously marked the boundaries of plots of land and gave access between them. It came to be used in a military sense, first of the roads that penetrated into enemy territory and thence, as further conquest ceased, of the land boundaries that divided Roman territory from non-Roman. At this stage a whole paraphernalia of border control grew up--frontier roads with intermittent watchtowers and forts and fortlets to house the provincial garrisons which moved up to the frontier line. The term limes comes to embrace the totality of the border area and its control system."
Comment: Unlike the United States and Western Europe, the Romans understood the concept of borders.
"Jerash is the site of the ruins of the Greco-Roman city of Gerasa, also referred to as Antioch on the Golden River. Ancient Greek inscriptions from the city support that the city was founded by Alexander the Great and his general Perdiccas, who allegedly settled aged Macedonian soldiers there during the spring of 331 BC, when he left Egypt and crossed Syria en route to Mesopotamia. However, other sources, namely the city's former name of 'Antioch on the Chrysorrhoas', point to a founding by Seleucid King Antiochus IV, while still others attribute the founding to Ptolemy II of Egypt." Source: Wikipedia.
Note: According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), the city was "probably a Seleucid foundation."
"After the Roman conquest [of the region] in 63 BC, Jerash and the land surrounding it were annexed to the Roman province of Syria, and later joined the Decapolis league of cities. The historian Josephus mentions the city as being principally inhabited by Syrians, and also having a small Jewish community. In AD 106, Jerash was absorbed into the Roman province of Arabia, which included the city of Philadelphia (modern day Amman). The Romans ensured security and peace in this area, which enabled its people to devote their efforts and time to economic development and encouraged civic building activity." (Wikipedia)
"Jerash is considered one of the largest and most well-preserved sites of Roman architecture in the world outside Italy."
Note: According to Wikipedia, "The earliest Arab/Semitic inhabitants, who lived in the area during the pre-classical period of the 1st millennium BCE, named their village Garshu. The Romans later Hellenized the former name of Garshu into Gerasa. Later, the name transformed into the Arabic Jerash."
Before the Roman conquest, Gerasa / Jerash was captured by Alexander Jannaeus (103 - 76 BC), the second Hasmonean king of Judaea. The city "remained in Jewish hands until in 63 BC it became part of Roman Syria and of the Decapolis," according to the OCD. "It's prosperity, dependent on caravan trade, increased later when Trajan annexed Nabataea[1]. Gerasa, having become part of the Arabian province, enjoyed a 'golden age' under the Antonines."
[1] "Nabataea remained independent from the 4th century BC until it was annexed by the Roman Empire in AD 106, which renamed it Arabia Petraea." (Wikipedia)
"One particularly important temple in the city of Gerasa was the Temple to Artemis, built during the reign of the Emperor Antoninus Pius (138-161 AD). The temple was built on a prominent hill. The major temple for which the city is known was built during the reign of Antoninus Pius, circa 150 AD, but there is evidence of an earlier, smaller sanctuary to Artemis that existed as early as 79 AD. This indicates that the veneration of Artemis was already important in the city before the Antonine period. In addition to the temple to Artemis, there is also a temple to Zeus, another important deity in the city, to the south." Source: Ancient Origins.
"The city of Jerash went through many changes during its long existence, going from a Semitic village to a Greco-Roman metropolis, and eventually to an Arabized metropolis. The city however remained inhabited and was able to adapt to each epoch in which it found itself. It is for this reason that it could be considered an everchanging city."
"...Whereas many open-air settlements are thought to be short-lived and chosen for specialized tasks, 'Ein Qashish appears to be the site of repeated occupations each of which hosted a range of general activities, indicating a stable and consistent settlement system. The authors suggest that within a complex settlement system, open-air sites may have been more important for prehistoric humans than previously thought."
Comment: It's possible that early Christians borrowed elements from the cults of Mithras and Osiris when they were developing their new Jesus religion, but it's also possible that the similarities between these three savior gods simply reflect a common strain of religious ideas that had been in circulation in the ancient Mediterranean world for millennia.
Mithras and Osiris are much older than Jesus. The first mention of Osiris dates back to Egypt's Fifth Dynasty (~2494 to 2345 BC) and Mithras was "an ancient Indo-Iranian god adopted in the Roman empire as the principle deity of a mystery cult which flourished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), 3rd ed. revised.
The Osiris cult spread through the Roman empire after the Roman conquest of Egypt. Mithraism, popular with the legions, was introduced after the Roman conquests in the East. Christianity, an obviously syncretic religion with many pagan elements, evolved from a combination of Egyptian, Roman, Asiatic and Hellenized Jewish influences. In many cases, the early Christian church simply appropriated pagan ideas and festivals as part of its ongoing culture war against paganism.
Mithraism has many similarities to other religions of the time. The beliefs of the cult have to be pieced together from inscriptions and artwork, however. According to the OCD, "the cult is known primarily from its archaeological remains. Over 400 find-spots are recorded, many of them excavated meeting-places. These and the ... dedicatory inscriptions give a good idea of cult life and membership."
In the case of Christianity, it's hard to know whether the beliefs of the Jesus cult simply emerged through a process of syncretism or whether the Christians just stole their ideas from the pagan belief systems they were competing against. Both of these things probably happened at the same time. One way or another, the "new" religion was hardly original and it could have lost the culture war to Mithraism if it hadn't acquired enough secular power to suppress its competitors.
Note: "During the later part of the Early Dynastic period, the inhabitants of Ur expended considerable energy to construct tombs for their deceased elites," according to the Penn Museum. "Though we do not know their identities with certainty, written evidence suggests that these elites were the city-state’s kings and queens, who may have fulfilled a number of important roles in life. We do not know whether the burial pits were dug and tomb chambers constructed before the death of their occupants or whether they were hastily prepared afterwards, the more likely alternative. But the considerable wealth in the tombs, including the animals and attendants buried with Ur’s kings and queens, testify to the power or pretensions to power of these elites and their ability to intimidate."
Note: "Excavations from 1922 to 1934 were funded by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania and led by the archaeologist Sir Charles Leonard Woolley. A total of about 1,850 burials were uncovered, including 16 that were described as 'royal tombs' containing many valuable artifacts, including the Standard of Ur [see next video]. Most of the royal tombs were dated to about 2600 BC. The finds included the unlooted tomb of a queen thought to be Queen Puabi—the name is known from a cylinder seal found in the tomb, although there were two other different and unnamed seals found in the tomb. Many other people had been buried with her, in a form of human sacrifice." (Wikipedia)
Comment: It's not too surprising that early Christians already viewed the pagan gods as demons. This outlook didn't suddenly come into existence when Christianity became the official religion of Rome. It should be pointed out, though, that the early Christians believed in demons (as do a lot of modern Christians). In other words, they believed that these demons were real. In fact, an argument can be made that Christianity in all of its various forms is itself a polytheistic religion since it believes in a hierarchy of supernatural deities ranging from Satan to demons and angels and a tripartite god, not to mention all of its miracle-performing semi-divine figures like the saints and the Virgin Mary.
As for Judaism, it was originally a polytheistic and animistic religion itself, according to the Jewish Virtual Library. The early Jews practiced animal sacrifice and magic, for instance, and worshiped "graven images" like the Golden Calf in the Bible. These tribes were pagan themselves until the rise of the Yahweh Cult and in the beginning Yahweh was still in competition with foreign gods until after the Babylonian exile. That's the traditional history, anyway, and it's not surprising at all that Christianity, which is presumed to have originated as a Jewish sect, would have inherited the Jewish hostility towards other gods. This intolerance led inevitably to the Christian war against paganism which destroyed the classical world once the Christians got their hands on secular power.
Gobekli Tepe is a prehistoric site in southeastern Turkey, "a series of circular and oval-shaped structures set on top of a hill." (Gobeklitepe.info) "What makes Gobekli Tepe unique in its class is the date it was built, which is roughly twelve thousand years ago, circa 10,000 BC."
Note: The age of Gobekli Tepe varies from source to source, sometimes by as much as a thousand years or so, but everybody agrees that it is extremely ancient.
This animation is supposed to be based on site maps, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.
"There are a number of unsettling things about Göbekli Tepe. It’s estimated to be eleven thousand years old—six and a half thousand years older than the Great Pyramid, five and a half thousand years older than the earliest known cuneiform texts, and about a thousand years older than the walls of Jericho, formerly believed to be the world’s most ancient monumental structure." Source: The New Yorker (2011)
Whatever its exact age, Gobekli Tepe is one of the oldest megalithic sites in the world, if not the oldest. It was apparently built during "two phases of use, believed to be of a social or ritual nature by site discoverer and excavator Klaus Schmidt, dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE. During the first phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected – the world's oldest known megaliths." (Wikipedia)
"More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles are currently known through geophysical surveys. Each pillar has a height of up to 6 m (20 ft) and weighs up to 10 tons [1]. They are fitted into sockets that were hewn out of the bedrock. In the second phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), the erected pillars are smaller and stood in rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime. The site was abandoned after the PPNB. Younger structures date to classical times."
[1] Some sources describe stones weighing up to 60 tons. I have no idea how reliable any of these numbers are.
Stone tools, at least one cave inscription and the ruins of what is thought to have been a Roman watchtower have been found on the site.
The site covers an area of around 1000 feet, I think, but it could be much larger than that (?) According to Wikipedia, only about five percent of the complex has been excavated. I don't know how accurate that is now, but new structures are still being discovered. Note: I'm not sure if the Wikipedia article on Gobekli Tepe reflects the finds described in the next video.
Video from 2018.
The purpose of the site is still unclear. Schmidt, the German archaeologist who led the excavations at Gobekli Tepe (1996 - 2014), argued that the megalithic complex was a "Stone Age mountain sanctuary," possibly for some kind of prehistoric cult of the dead, a pilgrimage site that drew people from all over the region. "Butchered bones found in large numbers from local game such as deer, gazelle, pigs, and geese have been identified as refuse from food hunted and cooked or otherwise prepared for the congregants." (Wikipedia)
Most of the sources I've seen echo Schmidt's conclusions, describing Gobekli Tepe as a temple. I'm not sure if this has ever been proven conclusively, however. Wikipedia states that "[t]he details of the structure's function remain a mystery."
Almost everything about Gobekli Tepe is a mystery. For example, it's still unclear who built the complex. According to Wikipedia, "[t]he inhabitants are presumed to have been hunters and gatherers who nevertheless lived in villages for at least part of the year," but if that's accurate they obviously weren't ordinary hunter-gatherers who were just starting to shift into a more settled existence. It would have required a lot of engineering knowledge to quarry, shape, transport and position these massive stones.
"Construction techniques vary but in the most elaborate there is a ring of T-shaped monolithic columns with a pair of larger, carved T-columns at the centre up to five metres tall. These not only supported a roof (for at least some of their life) but also represented abstracted human figures that were part of a belief system that is not yet understood. They are sculptural as well as structural, with animal figures in relief. " Source: The Art Newspaper.
Ordinary hunter-gatherers wouldn't have had the skills required to construct Gobekli Tepe. Whoever they were, they obviously had previous experience building megaliths. According to Wikipedia, " [i]f indeed the site was built by hunter-gatherers as some researchers believe then it would mean that the ability to erect monumental complexes was within the capacities of these sorts of groups, which would overturn previous assumptions. Some researchers believe that the construction of Göbekli Tepe may have contributed to the later development of urban civilization, or, as excavator Klaus Schmidt put it, 'First came the temple, then the city.'"
The next video describes one researcher's theory that Australian aborigines (or a people descended from them) built the complex.
Video from 2017.
This is an interesting theory, though not exactly mainstream. If Australian aborigines or their descendants built Gobekli Tepe, why aren't similar megalithic structures found in Australia? As it turns out, this is an extremely murky question. There are a few stone circles and alignments in Australia -- see the Megalithic Portal for details -- and one site has been called "Australia's stonehenge," but it was apparently "all but destroyed" around 1940 and "the exact location has never been disclosed for fear the little that remains could be trashed," according to news.com.au (2015). That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that the site actually exists, to say the least. Ancient Origins made a short documentary about "Australia's stonehenge," mostly notable for the fact that the video doesn't actually show any standing stones. Their 2017 article about the alleged site seems to fall into the "lost ancient exotic high technology" category.
We may never know who built Gobekli Tepe or why. The site is so mysterious that it acts like a magnet, attracting all kinds of speculation. According to Wikipedia, this fantastic megalithic complex "appears to raise more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers," but if nothing else it proves that prehistoric humans were a lot more advanced than commonly believed.
"Containing six lines of cuneiform script, and roughly the size of an adult thumb, [this tablet] was donated to the [Cambridge] University Library in 1921 but then lost to sight for many years before its rediscovery in 2016, during research for the Curious Objects exhibition, held as part of the University Library’s 600th anniversary." Source: Cambridge University Library.
"The full translation of the laconic text runs as follows: 18 jars of pig fat – Balli. 4 jars of pig fat – Nimgir-ab-lah. Fat dispensed (at ?) the city of Zabala. Ab-kid-kid, the scribe. 4th year 10th month."
Note: The words Balli, Nimgir-ab-lah, etc., are thought to be personal names. According to Cambridge, "[t]he man named Balli turns up regularly in other texts from the same area during the same period of history, and seems to be an official in charge of a wide range of oils: from pig fat and butter to sesame oil and almond oil."
This clay tablet is apparently the oldest written object held at Cambridge. A 3D animation and more information about the tablet can be found here.
"The Teutonic Order was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals. Its members have commonly been known as the Teutonic Knights, having a small voluntary and mercenary military membership, serving as a crusading military order for protection of Christians in the Holy Land and the Baltics during the Middle Ages."
"The order was led by a Grand Master ... who was chosen by an electoral college and who was expected to consult his senior officers and commanders. In the 15th century CE, there was a second master in Livonia who became increasingly independent from the order based at its then headquarters in Prussia. It did sometimes happen that a master was ousted by his officers, indeed there was one case of murder of a particularly unpopular master. The order controlled many lands across Europe and the Middle East, the territories split into administrative provinces or balleien, each governed by a landmeister." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.