Ala-Safat
Ala-Safat (also Al-Damiyah or Damiyah) is a dolmen field , located in Tell Damiyah south of Deir Alla (the place of the "Deir-Alla inscription") in Jordan .
With around 60 dolmens, Ala-Safat is one of the largest and best-known dolmen necropolises in Jordan, spread over several kilometers along the foothills east of the Jordan on the salt road. The dolmen field endangered by a quarry includes not only the dolmen with a square soul hole but also stone circles and rock graves . Closure plates with a hole are also found in rock tombs near the dolmens.
There is another group of 8 dolmens a little further north on the slopes of the Zerka River. Most of the dolmens were built on a raised circular terrace. To the north of Syria are the megalithic complexes on the Golan .
Excavations give the impression that the construction of the megalithic complex goes back to a culture on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula , which left dolmens in the mountainous areas of Jordan from the 3rd to the beginning of the 2nd millennium .
Perrot and Chipiez note that some of the monuments in Moab are similar in style to the giant tombs of Sardinia. Others are simple dolmens. In Ala-Safat, the bottom of a dolmen is formed by a single flat stone slab. The large top plate rests on two long blocks.
literature
- Moshe Stekelis: La necrópolis megalítica de Ala-Safat, Transjordania Diputacion Provincial de Barcelona, Instituto de Prehistoria y Arqueologia, Barcelona: 1961
- Sibylle von Reden: The Megalithic Cultures. DuMont, Cologne 1978, 1982, ISBN 3-7701-1055-2 .
- Georges Perrot, Charles Chipiez: Histoire de l'art dans l'antiquité: Egypte, Assyrie, Perse, Asie Mineure, Grèce, Étrurie, Rome , Volume 3: Phénice - Cypre , Paris, 1885 ( digitized version )