You have probably seen the so-called Amman Fingers in photos while researching your next trip to Jordan. Or perhaps you are standing before them now and are curious to know what they are. In this post, we tell you the striking story of this colossal piece of hand, a testament to the majesty this city once achieved.
A Little History to Understand
The city of Amman is considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Founded around the 7th millennium BC, it was home to the Ammonites in the 2nd millennium BC, from whom it takes its name. Subsequently, it fell under various foreign dominations, such as Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks… and finally the Romans, in 30 BC.
The Romans called it Philadelphia, and it became one of the cities of the Decapolis, on the eastern edge of their empire, crucial for their territorial dominance in the region. Hence the importance it acquired, and the monumentality of some buildings they constructed, such as the theater or the Temple of Hercules, erected in the 2nd century, during the time of Marcus Aurelius. It is located in what later became the Arab Citadel (Jabal al-Qal’a), atop one of the city’s hills, with its Umayyad palace, and from where all of Amman can be seen.
A temple that, by the way, is unclear whether it was ever finished or if it was truly dedicated to Hercules. But if we accept both ideas, that leads us to believe that the famous Amman Fingers are part of the hand of said demigod, worshipped here in one of the largest temples in the entire empire.
Finished or not, the truth is that a devastating earthquake caused the temple and statue to collapse in 749 AD, already under Arab rule. In subsequent centuries, it is likely that the remains of the temple and statue were dismantled to erect other buildings in the city. Only in the 20th century were archaeological works resumed to recover what remained, and in the 1990s, some elements, such as several columns and part of the entablature, were re-erected.
The Amman Fingers and the Statue of Hercules
As we mentioned, a statue in honor of Hercules must have been erected next to the Temple of Hercules, which would have collapsed and broken into pieces during the 749 earthquake. No images or drawings of it are preserved, and the only things that remain in their original place are the elbow and three fingers of one hand.
When observed in photographs, it gives the impression of being a gigantic hand. But, although it has extraordinarily large dimensions, the optical effect can be misleading: as it is currently displayed, the fingers reach a person’s knee height.
In any case, the dimensions of the Amman Fingers allow for an approximate calculation of the size the statue of Hercules must have been: between 9 and 13 meters, according to various sources. This is much larger than most monumental statues, whether civil or religious, though not as large as other iconic statues of our time, such as the 46 meters of the Statue of Liberty in New York or the 30 meters of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.
Much has been speculated about its original arrangement. But by analyzing the position of the fingers, it can be inferred that this hand, the left one, is holding a cylindrical element, such as a club, a common attribute of this hero, which he used in his famous labors. His body, for its part, would have been standing, upright, displaying his usual semi-nude musculature, as deduced from the exposed elbow.
