Jordan Museum works to make history accessible

AMMAN — A lifelong passion for history and archaeology led Ihab Amarin, director of The Jordan Museum, to pursue the field as his profession, he said at the American Centre of Research on Tuesday.

“Every town in Jordan has its own identity,” Amarin said during his presentation, titled “The Jordan Museum: More than 10,000 years of Human Resilience and Innovation”.

Speaking about the story of Jordan, Amarin said that “politics, architecture and urban planning are put together, and they are inseparable”. 

Highlighting the importance of the public’s access to their own history, Amarin said that the construction of an archaeological park could allow Jordanian heritage to be available for the whole community, rather than only scholars.

“We extracted Jordanian values from our cultural heritage, and it is our role as managers of cultural institutions and museums to promote these values to the new generations,” Amarin continued, adding that Jordan is “a land of continuity, innovation and 10,000 year old history of different civilisations”.

How ordinary people lived, built their houses is what matters for researchers, he said, stressing that the role of museums is to document these information and societal transformations.

The Jordan Museum has a think tank, in addition to partners and researchers who help the institution disseminate its vast knowledge of local history to the general public, he said.

The museum’s location in the lower part of the downtown showcases its mission to be “an organic part” of its urban surroundings, Amarin added.

“If I’m proud of my country, I can deal with it in a better way; a target audience for The Jordan Museum are Jordanian visitors and interested tourists,” Amarin said, adding that if people are interested, the museum must engage them, and if they are not, it must inspire them to become aware of Jordan’s rich cultural heritage.