(Re)constructing Jarash: History, historiography and the making of the ancient city

Elena D. Corbett opens her volume on Competitive Archaeology in Jordan by describing the 1999 banknotes that were issued in celebration of King Abdullah II of Jordan’s accession to the Hashemite throne.² The banknotes bear images, among others, of the Hijaz Railway, the first Parliament and the first Hashemite Palace in Ma‘an. These images replaced depictions of the archaeological and touristic sites of Jarash and Petra, which had appeared on Jordanian banknotes issued since the creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946. The reasoning behind the omission of Jarash and Petra in favour of the new images was