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The Ifpo Conservation Project of the Aqaba Church (1): General Presentation

From October 3 to December 31, 2023, the French Institute of the Near East (Ifpo) carried out at Aqaba the conservation of a mudbrick building interpreted as one of the oldest churches in the world, said to be dating back to the 4th century (fig. 1). It was discovered in the 1990s by the Roman ‘Aqaba Project (dir. Pr. Th. Parker from North Carolina State University). At the time, the building and surrounding walls, located in area J East, were in a remarkable state of preservation (Parker 1998, Thomas et al. 2007), with mudbrick walls preserved to an elevation of over 2 m, still presenting arches, doors, windows, and niches. Nevertheless, this considerable site has never been the subject of protection and conservation measures commensurate with its value, despite the church’s original construction material making it particularly vulnerable. Emergency intervention was needed to protect this significant heritage site from inevitable destruction: some walls were collapsing, others disintegrating and ultimately threatening to disappear altogether in the absence of intervention (fig. 2). The site was also completely incomprehensible to visitors, who could not understand its shape nor organisation.

Fig. 1. The site of the Aqaba church after the conservation led by Ifpo.

Fig. 2. The site of the Aqaba church before the conservation led by Ifpo

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The Scope of the Project

In 2022, the Department of Antiquities (DoA) of Jordan and the American Center of Research (ACOR) agreed to safeguard and rehabilitate the historical and cultural heritage of the building in the framework of the ‘Aqaba Church Rehabilitation Project’ (fig. 3). This aimed to build a shelter, conserve and repair the site’s structures, as well as install a pathway and explanatory panels. Due to its expertise, they called on the French Institute of the Near East (Ifpo) to take charge of the conservation part of this project. Few months earlier, the same Institute had suggested in a concept note some propositions regarding the conservation of the building to the DoA. The Ifpo requested to add to this project the documentation of the remains for scientific reasons and the training of a DoA team for taking care of the future maintenance of the conservation work. To do so, and to fund a better conservation project, the Institute obtained a grant from the French association L’Œuvre de l’Orient to complete the total funds. The funding of the conservation project was supported by the Ifpo (43%), the association L’Oeuvre d’Orient (31%) and by the Jordanian government via ACOR (26%).

Fig. 3. Plan of the Aqaba church after Parker’s publications with new numbering of the walls and rooms, for the use of conservation.

The team consisted of Dr. Julie Bonnéric (project coordinator), Arch. Emmanuelle Devaux (responsible for conservation), Eng. Mariam Azzeh and Arch. Roy Aghnatios (conservation implementation), Waseem Jaradat (archaeological monitoring, cleaning and documentation). Arch. Nujud Ashour participated in the condition assessment and preliminary materials testing. The DoA team was composed of Maher Amareen, Mohammad Mousa, Dr. Fatima Abushaqqal, Eng. Iman Albdour, Eng. Batool Al-Saqarat, Tasnim Allababdeh, and Amin Alhwity. Local workmen were hired for the project and trained during its whole duration. The workmen from Aqaba had experience in working on archaeological sites and sometimes on conservation projects, but not on mudbrick conservation. This is why the team was completed with skilled workmen: three from Quwayrah because of their experience with mud coating and one Egyptian mason specialist of mudbrick construction. All the technical decisions were discussed with the Technical Committee and carried out only after validation.

Mainly due to the delay in the signature of the MoA between the DoA and ACOR, it was not possible to undertake a conservation plan before the start of the fieldwork. Nevertheless, the Ifpo produced a Condition assessment and technical proposition interventions (Ashour & Devaux 2023) to identify the first pathologies, understand the wall destruction processes, and suggest different technical solutions and to be the basis for discussions with the Technical Committee. Thus the conservation plan was completed on November 8, 2023. The cleaning and documentation of the structures were also carried out in the course conservation implementation.

The Conservation of the Structures

The overall objective of the project was to consolidate and protect the remains. In this view, different technical possibilities were explored, in particular by identifying the best conservation materials in terms of their compatibility with the original ones and the most adapted to the site (location, climate and materials), considering both man-made and natural destruction processes, as well as world standards for good heritage preservation. The main natural issue was the saline capillarity and the technical solution adopted to limit its impact was the use of gravel bed under stone courses to support the mudbrick courses repairing the undercut and to allow distributed evaporation to protect the core of the walls.

First, many tests were conducted to choose the best soil and the best composition (soil, sand, straw) to be used to create new mudbricks, earth mortar and earth coating. Regarding the mudbrick blocks, the tests evaluated in particular their strength, resistance to capillarity, erosion and abrasion. The resistance of different base and finish coat plasters was also tested, as the compatibility between the new material and the original structures. Two additives to optimise the performance of earthen materials were tested: the gum Arabic solution showed quite interesting results compared to Koster TG500. The last was applied only on white lime coating in one room, to follow the Technical Committee request, even if we recommended the gum Arabic solution. An important step of the project, based on all these tests, was the production of mudbricks (around 3000 bricks in total), cob, mortar and plaster (fig. 4).

Fig. 4. The fabrication of the mudbricks to fill the undercuts at the base of the walls and stabilize the walls.

Regarding the repair, the most stable walls were protected by filling the cracks and applying a base coating and a final coating. Known as a sacrificial layer, this coating will deteriorate instead of the original wall. However, most of the walls also had deep undercuts that were filled with new mudbricks (or cob and pieces of brick for shallow undercuts). No brick courses were restored, on any wall, because the wall’s elevation was not enough documented by the archives. However, 8 niches were repaired with rot-resistant wood thanks to the trace of a wooden lintel suggesting its original size or after measurements taken from drawings and pictures. It was also possible to repair the only doorway still standing (fig. 5) and stabilise two window or top-ventilation openings).

Fig. 5. The only doorway of the site under repair by using mudbricks in the undercuts and northern jamb, before coating.

 

Fig. 6. The mudbricks counterforts built to support southern facing of wall 19.

The Documentation

The project’s first specific objective was the scientific documentation of the remains. On the one hand, it was necessary to conserve and restore the walls in the most scientifically accurate way, on the other hand, conservation appeared to be an opportunity to complete the documentation after the walls were cleaned. This objective involved meticulous cleaning of the walls, architectural and constructional analysis, archival work, and precise documentation of the stratigraphy and architectural remains (with descriptions, drawings and photographs). Each wall was documented through a description sheet with its measurements, a description of the building techniques, its altitudes, its relationships to other walls, a description of the bays. In the archives of the North Carolina State University courteously communicated by Pr. Megan Perry, the information related to the linking between the walls was very few and it seems that the phasing was mainly based on the stratigraphy, which seemed very accurate and well-documented. The analysis of the relationships between the walls and the building techniques aimed to propose a phasing of the walls’ construction. The study of the building techniques is also promising for the knowledge of earthen architecture since it is quite rare to have so well-preserved mudbrick elevation dating back to Antiquity in Jordan. Both are still in progress.

The DoA Staff Training

The second specific objective of the project was to train the DoA team in Aqaba in the conservation of mudbrick architecture to be able to maintain the restoration of the Aqaba church and to supervise the team of skilled workmen who were trained during the conservation work, as well as to work on other threatened sites with earthen architecture in Jordan. The DoA’s employees were not available to intensively participate in the different steps of the project through all its duration as expected. Four specifically tailored workshops on earthen construction were carried out by Eng. Mariam Azzeh (AK Habitat) (fig. 7).

Fig. 7. Training carried out for the DoA team in Aqaba.

 

Despite significant logistical difficulties, such as the absence of a water management plan, the non-communication of the shelter plan, the delay in the shelter’s construction and challenging technical issues, the project’s main activities were all successfully completed. The condition assessment and technical evaluation were completed, all of the walls were cleaned and documented before repair, the conservation plan was correctly followed during its implementation and the technical solutions were successful. The work was undertaken under archaeological monitoring. It was well documented, in particular by picturing and reporting. A condition assessment (Ashour & Devaux 2023), an inception report (Bonnéric & Devaux 2023), a preliminary report (Aghnatios et al 2023a), conservation plan (Aghnatios et al 2023b), an interim report (Aghnatios et al 2023c) and a final report (Bonnéric et al. 2024) were produced. The local DoA staff received a certain amount of training, but raising awareness was unfortunately not a priority activity and could not be completed as planned due to a lack of time. The conservation part of the Aqaba Church Project completely changed the appearance of the site, with all the preserved walls repaired and recoated.

Bibliography

Aghnatios et al. 2023a. Aghnatios R, Azzeh M., Bonnéric J., Devaux E., Jaradat W., The Aqaba Church Project: Ifpo’s Preliminary Report, unpublished report, 2023, 38 p.

Aghnatios et al. 2023b. Aghnatios R, Ashour N., Azzeh M., Bonnéric J., Devaux E., The Aqaba Church Project: Conservation Plan, unpublished report, 2023, 143 p.

Aghnatios et al. 2023c. Aghnatios R, Azzeh M., Bonnéric J., Devaux E., Jaradat W., The Aqaba Church Project: Ifpo’s Intermediate Report, unpublished report, 2023, 67 p.

Ashour & Devaux 2023. Ashour N., Devaux E., Condition assessment and technical proposition interventions, unpublished report, 2023, 90 p.

Bonnéric & Devaux 2023. Bonnéric J., Devaux E., The Aqaba Church Project: Ifpo’s Inception Report, unpublished report, 2023, 13 p.

Bonnéric et al. 2024. Bonnéric J., Devaux E., Azzeh M., Jaradat W., Aghnatios R, The Aqaba Church Project: Ifpo’s Final Report, unpublished report, 2024, 152 p.

Parker 1998. Parker T., “The Roman ‘Aqaba Project: the 1996 Campaign”, ADAJ XLII, 1998: 375-394.

Thomas et al. 2007. Thomas R., Niemi T., Parker T., “Structural Damage from Earthquakes in the Second-Ninth Century at the Archaeological Site of Aila in Aqaba, Jordan”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 346, 2007: 59-77.


Julie Bonnéric est docteure en histoire et archéologie de l’Islam médiéval. Chercheuse et responsable de l’Ifpo en Jordanie de 2020 à 2024, elle dirige plusieurs programmes de recherche archéologique tels que le Eastern Jerash Project depuis 2022 ou celui du site médiéval d’al-Quṣūr, dans le cadre de la mission archéologique franco-koweïtienne de Faïlaka (Koweït) dont elle est responsable scientifique de la partie française depuis juillet 2014.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Julie Bonnéric (10 mars 2025). The Ifpo Conservation Project of the Aqaba Church (1): General Presentation. Les carnets de l’Ifpo. Consulté le 18 avril 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/13fz8


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