The Jordan Museum
Opened in 2014 in the Ras al-Ain district, the Jordan Museum is the country's largest and most modern national museum, and it is dramatically undervisited by tourists who head straight for the Citadel. The building is architecturally striking and the collection is world-class.
The Ain Ghazal Statues
The museum's crown jewels are the Ain Ghazal statues — 32 plaster figures excavated from a Neolithic site in eastern Amman and dated to approximately 7000–6500 BC. They are among the oldest large-scale human sculptures ever found, and seeing them in person, with their haunting inlaid bitumen eyes, is genuinely affecting.
The statues were discovered during a road construction project in 1983 and their preservation is considered one of archaeology's great rescues. The museum's dedicated gallery for them is dim and reverential, designed to let the figures command the space they deserve.
The Dead Sea Scrolls Fragment
The Jordan Museum also holds one of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments — a small but significant piece of the copper scroll from Qumran — alongside an excellent explanation of how the scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 and why their contents rewrote understanding of early Judaism and Christianity.
The broader permanent collection moves chronologically from prehistoric Jordan through the Nabataean, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods with clear English labelling and thoughtful curation. Budget two hours minimum.
The Jordan Museum on video
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