2.01 Pella — East Church

Summary information

• Location

  GPS coordinates: 32.44909, 35.61791

  Structure is partially visible in Google maps.

• Description

  The plan is of a triapsidal basilica with an external central apse. The excavated southern apse is, by contrast, inscribed, and one assumes that the northern apse, as yet unexcavated, is also inscribed. The length of the church (excluding the atrium) is 28.23 m, and each of the colonnades between nave and aisles was composed of seven columns approximately 2.60 m apart. The ground plan is slightly asymmetrical; the internal width is 15.61 m at the western end of the body of the church, narrowed at the eastern end to 14.77 m. The minimum height for the springing of the hemidome of the central apse is 5.26 m above the floor.

  Like the body of the church, the eastern end was apparently stripped of nearly all items of value before the final destruction in the earthquake of
  746 /47 [749]. However, enough remained to give an impression of how the building appeared in its heyday. The chancel was about half a meter higher than the floor of the church. Its projection into the nave was not as great as in some churches in the area, and its relationship to the aisles is not yet clear. It was reached from the nave by a single, centrally-placed step of finely cut marble, and was provided with an ornately carved chancel screen, supported by colonnettes, now lost. Sufficient fragments of the screen were found scattered around the chancel to permit a paper reconstruction. No fragments relating to the ambo could be identified, although amorphous holes in the robbed-out floor of the chancel’s southwestern sector may indicate its location.

  The synthronus remained in situ against the wall of the central apse, although all its decorative facing stones had been robbed out.

  In the middle of the chancel, surrounded by a crudely-laid paving of stone tiles, the top of the reliquary container was located. It had been left undisturbed when the church was being robbed of its fittings. This fact, and the presence of the rough tile work, suggest that the stripping of the church was not an act of outright desecration so much as a symptom of a declining Christian population, and that there were at least a few Christians still interested in maintaining the church for worship right up until its destruction.

  Smith, Robert H., and Anthony W. McNicoll. “The 1982 and 1983 Seasons at Pella of the Decapolis.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Supplement, no. 24 (1986): 95-96.

• Phasing

  According to the style of the capitals and the type of a few (illegible) words collected under the chancel’s stylobate, the construction of the building is attributed to the end of the fifth or the beginning of the 6th century. At the beginning of the 7th century, the church would have partially collapsed and would have suffered looting, resulting in particular in the spoliation of the veneer elements. The excavators proposed to place the abandonment of the building either at the time of the Persian occupation, or rather at the time of the Muslim conquest, because the ceramics collected in the embankments presented forms known exclusively to the Umayyad period. The church would then have been restored in a restricted form and used until the earthquake of 747/748.

  (translated from Michel, 122, 125.)

• Bibliogaphy

  Smith, Robert H., and Anthony W. McNicoll. “The 1982 and 1983 Seasons at Pella of the Decapolis.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Supplement, no. 24 (1986): 89–116.

  ADAJ, 24, 1980, p. 22-26, pl. 8-1 I ; 1981, p. 298-299 ; 26, 1982, p. 351, pl. 540 ; 28, 1984, p. 76-77 , pl. 12; 30, 1986, p. 172-176.

  BASOR, 240, autumn 1980, p. 73-75 ; 243, summer 1981, p. 12.

  Pella in Jordan, 1: An interim Report on the Joint University of Sydney and the College of Wooster Excavations at Pella 1979-1981, Camberra, Australian Galle1y, 1982, p. I 03-110, 127-130.

  Pella in Jordan, 2, Mediterranean Archaeology Supplement, 2, Sydney, 1992, p. 153-163, pl. 103-107.