A18 Al Khirbah As Samra – St. George Church (Church 79)

Summary information

• Location

  GPS coordinates: 32.17967, 36.16165

  Coordinates are approximate.

• Description

  Church 79 was built next to Church 78, immediately to the west by modifying older buildings. It is probably the latest of the churches discovered at Samra. But it is the largest of the four churches unearthed in this sector, 19 X 11.50 m. It has a nave and aisles and was originally designed with an apse, which is the only example in Samra. The mosaic floors were little touched by the iconoclasts since the decor is almost exclusively geometric with repetition of the fifty panels of the thistle motif. The registration of dedication is also complete, giving the date of the laying of the pavement, c. 640 AD. Another inscription in the center of the nave indicates the donors, the name of the bishop and that of the patron saint of the church, Saint George. At the east end of the south aisle a small room could have served as a martyrium, while the sacristy is located at the off the north aisle. Another door to the east gives access to the north exterior; outside and on the right hand, a hollow pagan altar served as a holy water font. Another altar, smaller, was found in the late blocking of this same door. They are the testimony. of a place of worship in Samra, before the Byzantine period.

  Michele Piccirillo, “Ricerca storico-archeologica in Giordania V (1985),” Liber Annuus 35 (1985): 433.

  The church was a small basilica with three naves (18.75 x 11.50 m), which was accessed from the west by a door which opened onto the central nave. To the north, a doorway give access to the courtyard on which also opened the three other churches of the group; a second doorway access a small room of trapezoidal plan which the excavators consider like a sacristy.

  The naves were divided into two rows of five pillars which supported, according to the excavators, arcades cross-sections, of which keystones were collected. These bows apparently supported the basalt beams of a ceiling.  Similar coverage would have existed over the aisles.

  A small room paved with mosaic without decoration was fitted out in the last span of the southern aisle.

  The east end of the church has an irregularly shaped apse, whose architecture was probably determined by constructions that existed around the building. The apse (opening 4.50 m, depth 3.80 m) was inscribed between an oblique wall to the north and the room adjoining the facade of the Saint-Pierre church, which encroached on the south aisle. The apse would be the only one among those of the churches of Khirbat al-Samra to belong to the original design plan of the building.

  The sanctuary, raised by two steps, extended to the apse and the last bay of the central nave. It is accessed through a gate placed in the center of the chancel screen, of which only the southern part of the base for the screen remained. A post-column (2.15 m high) discovered in the sanctuary would have been placed at the entrance to the chancel.

  Masonry benches were installed on both sides other side of the entrance, against the western wall of the church, and at the western end of the northern aisle. Reports indicate the closing of the aisle in front of the bench “left of the entrance”, apparently intended to highlight value this space. The relative chronology of benches is not specified, but it is not impossible that they are contemporary with the mosaic, of which they follow the drawing.

  The building was entirely paved with mosaics. So that the side aisles were decorated with geometric mosaics with an oblique grid, the central nave had a interlaced carpet filled with geometric and vegetal figures, while a circular medallion inscribed in a square and surrounded by a hessian border was placed slightly in front of the center of the mat. The two donor portraits represented at the eastern end of the pavement were mutilated then repaired with the same tesserae reused in mess. Immediately to the east of this carpet, an inscription Greek in a dovetail cartouche preceded the shrine walk.

  The western half of the latter had a carpet geometric with oblique grid, similar to that of aisles.

  Anne Michel, Les Eglises d’Epoque Byzantine et Umayyade de La Jordanie V-VIII Siecle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 205–6.

• Phasing

  The date of the construction of the church, which the excavators consider as the latest of the group, remains unknown. The inscription which was placed in a medallion in the center of the nave recalled the pose of the mosaic a the time of Theodore of Bosra and the dedication of the church to George:

  By the gift of the giver. God, (who) knows who he is, ouch pity him. Under Archbishop Theodore was made the mosaic of St. George by the zeal of Casiseos the deacon and paramonary.

  A second inscription in front of the chancel’s stylobate gave the date of 502 (?) of the province of Arabia, i.e., 607 AD.

  In the month of Artemisios, in the time of the tenth year of the indiction, the year 502 (?) of the province. Lord, have pity and protect this village, from small to large from now until eternity.

  According to the differences in spelling presented by two inscriptions, P. -L. Gatier proposes to return two different stages of work, one under the archbishop Polyeucte of Bosra in 607, the other under the episcopate of Theodore, known between 634 and 639 at least.

  It is not known when the building was abandoned; the destruction and the repair of the animated motifs of the nave mosaic suggest a subsequent abandonment of iconoclastic destruction which were perpetrated on the pavements of the churches of the region.

  Anne Michel, Les Eglises d’Epoque Byzantine et Umayyade de La Jordanie V-VIII Siecle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 205–6.

  A fifth church of S. George, no. 79, had an inscription dating its mosaic floor to around 640. The history of the church after 640 is unknown.

  Robert Schick, The Christian Communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule: A Historical and Archaeological Study, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam (Princeton, N.J: Darwin Press, 1995), 378.

• Bibliogaphy

  Desreumaux, Alain, and Jean-Baptiste Humbert. “La Première Campagne de Fouilles à Kh. Es-Samra: 1981.” Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 26 (1982): 173–82.

  Michel, Anne. Les Eglises d’Epoque Byzantine et Umayyade de La Jordanie V-VIII Siecle. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001.

  Piccirillo, Michele. “Ricerca storico-archeologica in Giordania V (1985).” Liber Annuus 35 (1985): 391–449.

  ———. The Mosaics of Jordan. American Center of Oriental Research Publications; No. 1. Amman, Jordan: American Center of Oriental Research, 1993.

  Schick, Robert. The Christian Communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule: A Historical and Archaeological Study. Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam. Princeton, N.J: Darwin Press, 1995.