Umm er-rasas

City vignette by Kastron Mefa'a, detail of the floor mosaic in St. Stephen's Church

Umm er-Rasas ( Arabic أم الرصاص, DMG Umm ar-Raṣāṣ ; also: Kastron Mefa'a or Mefaa or Mephaon ) is an archaeological site in Jordan with ruins from the end of the 3rd to the 9th century. It is located around 70 km south of Amman and 30 km from Madaba and probably represents the Mefaat mentioned in Joshua 18, 13 (also Mephaat , Mefa'at , Mepha'at ).

Umm er-Rasas was a walled settlement and contains ruins from Roman and Byzantine times as well as early Islam . So far only a small part of Umm er-Rasas has been excavated. This includes a Roman military camp measuring 150 × 150 meters, the outer wall of which is reinforced with towers at the corners. Remains of a tower, which was used by the first Christian monks, as well as some churches date from the Byzantine period. Below is a church dedicated to St. Stephen with mosaics from the Umayyad period . They show cityscapes from Jordan, Palestine and Egypt .

Since 2004 belongs Umm er-Rasas for World Heritage of UNESCO .

literature

• Frank Rainer Scheck : Jordan. Peoples and cultures between the Jordan and the Red Sea. 6th edition. DuMont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern 2011, ISBN 3-7701-3979-8 , p. 274-276 .
• Stefania Tateo: Umm er-Rasas (Jordan): From Roman-Byzantine to Islamic Town. In: Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Research Center, 18 , 2000, pp. 22-31

Web links

Commons : Umm ar-Rasas  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry on the UNESCO World Heritage Center website ( English and French ).
• Photos of the mosaics of St. Stephen's Church

Individual evidence

1. ^ Edward Lipiński: On the Skirts of Canaan in the Iron Age. Peeters Publishers, Leuven, 2006 , p. 331

Coordinates: 31 ° 29 ′ 59 ″  N , 35 ° 55 ′ 11 ″  E