Thank you for visiting the Umm el-Jimal website. I hope it can convey to you the magic of my own first visit long ago in 1968, when I was a novice architect for the Hesban Project, phase I. Coming from a tell with no ruins exposed, I was enthralled by the verticality of this place, with nearly intact structures up to three stories high and soaring towers, and all buildings so black they seemed to be shaded though actually sun-struck under the clear desert sky.
“Anyone working here?” I asked. “No, not really, not since Butler’s survey in 1909,” was the answer. Thus began my long affair with Umm el-Jimal. First the mapping. Butler and the Princeton Expedition team had come through for a quick study of all the “public buildings,” still bearing names he gave them - Praetorium, Barracks, the fifteen churches, the twenty most prestigious villas. Undaunted, I tackled all the remaining, “minor” structures, over a hundred houses, wall by wall, room by room… and never lost that original enthrallment.
Then came the seasons of excavations, beginning with the first soundings of 1974, done with Jim Sauer followed by seasons in the 70s and 80s teamed with fellow young Hesban “graduates,” and the nineties with my own Calvin students and local Grand Valley University colleague Janet Brashler who helped us branch from buildings from the living to the abodes of the dead.
And my family was always there. I remember our son, Guy, aged nine, running excitedly from playing in his ruin of the day, “Papa, look at what I found!” Horrors! It was an undetonated, corroded hand-grenade! We all survived. My daughters, Tara and Tanya came back as college field school enrollees. And Sally, my wife, created bedrooms and kitchens and hired the workers from the village. Only she could choose twenty men from a throng of 120 applicants and have everyone leave smiling.
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“Anyone working here?” I asked. “No, not really, not since Butler’s survey in 1909,” was the answer. Thus began my long affair with Umm el-Jimal. First the mapping. Butler and the Princeton Expedition team had come through for a quick study of all the “public buildings,” still bearing names he gave them - Praetorium, Barracks, the fifteen churches, the twenty most prestigious villas. Undaunted, I tackled all the remaining, “minor” structures, over a hundred houses, wall by wall, room by room… and never lost that original enthrallment.
Then came the seasons of excavations, beginning with the first soundings of 1974, done with Jim Sauer followed by seasons in the 70s and 80s teamed with fellow young Hesban “graduates,” and the nineties with my own Calvin students and local Grand Valley University colleague Janet Brashler who helped us branch from buildings from the living to the abodes of the dead.
And my family was always there. I remember our son, Guy, aged nine, running excitedly from playing in his ruin of the day, “Papa, look at what I found!” Horrors! It was an undetonated, corroded hand-grenade! We all survived. My daughters, Tara and Tanya came back as college field school enrollees. And Sally, my wife, created bedrooms and kitchens and hired the workers from the village. Only she could choose twenty men from a throng of 120 applicants and have everyone leave smiling.
Page 2