Jordan- Jerash

In the historic Roman city of Jerash in Northern Jordan, I toured the city on foot and watched the RACE, Roman Army and Chariot Experience. It’s the NASCAR of over 2000 years ago, a Roman chariot reenactment race in the well-restored city of Jerash.

I sat along with the audience, listening to the trumpets announce the performance. The RACE show is open to the public and features forty-five legionaries in full amour demonstrating drill and battle tactics, gladiator fights and Roman chariot races around the historic hippodrome. The show is kitschy and engaging, as the audience decides who gets sacrificed during each ‘fight to the death,’ but also educational. The creators have tried to be historically accurate with the performers' clothing and gear.

Jerash is about a 50 minute drive from Amman, Jordan’s capitol. The scenery changes as you travel North, becoming much more hilly and fertile. Jerash has been called “the Pompeii of the Middle East” and is a major attraction in Jordan. Once a part of the Decapolis, a federation of ten important Roman cities in the Middle East, Jerash is thought to have been inhabited as far back as the Bronze Age. I hiked around the city’s colonnaded streets in the morning, exploring its impressive theatres, temples and public squares.

At the Temple of Artemis, my guide demonstrated the supposed shockproof construction the Romans employed by placing a spoon and rock in a small opening at the base of one of the columns. He wanted me to put my finger in the small space, which I did for a second, but as soon as I felt a slight pinch, I was out of there! The columns at this temple are said to sway in the wind and might have been constructed this way to withstand high winds and possible earthquakes. If you stare at them, it’s hard to tell. My guide had a better way to prove this. Since it wasn’t windy out, we gave a push to the large stone column and it began to sway, moving the spoon up and down. Whatever the reasoning behind this construction, these columns have lasted a long time, even with all of the tourists doing the spoon trick.

After the RACE performance, I left the shaded portion of the hippodrome to get a closer look at the chariots. Of course, to enter the arena, I had to dress the part. I pulled on a burgundy colored toga and completed the ensemble with a heavy belt and fake sword. As I examined the chariot, Stellan Lind, the Swedish history enthusiast who started RACE, told me about the design for the chariots they use in Jerash’s reenactments. Lind is obsessed with the movie “Ben-Hur,” and after watching it in the 1970’s he decided that he had to create "Ben-Hur" somewhere in the world. That somewhere is Jordan and Jerash is the perfect location. From the 1st to the 7th centuries AD, chariots were raced around the same track where the RACE chariots compete today.

Lind told me that the chariots in the movies, like “Ben-Hur,” are much heavier than they would have really used to race in Roman times. The chariots in the show in Jerash are in between the really lightweight chariots the Romans used to race, constructed of willow rails and wood, and the heavier, more visually pleasing, movie chariots, which were more in line with ceremonial chariots. That made sense to me. If you are actually racing, you want the lightest, smallest chariot possible.

Learn more about equestrian vacations in Jordan.