The Silent Faces of 'Ain Ghazal: Among the Oldest Statues of the Human Form

A village older than writing

On the eastern edge of modern Amman, near the Zarqa River, lies the site of 'Ain Ghazal, the Spring of the Gazelle. Around 9,000 years ago it was one of the largest villages in the Near East, home to people who were among the first to farm crops, keep goats and live in permanent houses. This was the Neolithic period, thousands of years before the invention of writing. The site was found in 1974, when a new road was being built through the area. Archaeologists began excavating in the early 1980s and uncovered houses with plastered floors, tools and burials. Then, in 1983, they found something no one had expected.

Statues buried with care

Deep in a pit, the team found a group of figures laid carefully in the ground, one on top of another. A second group was found in 1985. Together the two caches held about thirty figures: full statues with bodies and legs, and busts showing only the head and shoulders. Some of the busts have two heads side by side. The figures were made from lime plaster shaped around a frame of reeds and twine. Their eyes were outlined with a dark material, probably bitumen, which gives them their striking gaze. The tallest are close to one metre high. Restoring such fragile objects took years of patient work by specialists.

A mystery without words

Because the people of 'Ain Ghazal left no writing, no one knows exactly what the statues meant. Some researchers think they represented honoured ancestors, others that they were figures of protective spirits or heroes from stories now lost. The careful burial suggests that the statues were treated with respect, perhaps buried when their time of use had ended. Whatever their meaning, they show that people living 9,000 years ago in what is now Amman had the skill, organisation and imagination to create images of themselves on a large scale. They are a remarkable chapter in the long human story of Jordan.

Where to see them

Several of the 'Ain Ghazal statues are displayed at the Jordan Museum in downtown Amman, where they are presented as one of the treasures of the national collection. Other figures are held by major museums abroad. Plan time to stand in front of them without hurrying. Look at the eyes, the small hands and the flat profiles, and remember that these figures were made before the pyramids of Egypt and before the first cities of Mesopotamia. The site of 'Ain Ghazal itself is not set up for visitors, so the museum is the place to meet them.

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