For a decade, several studies have renewed significantly our knowledge about public baths and their practice in the Middle East. Unfortunately, no synthesis considering the bathing phenomenon in a diachronic perspective of history of mentalities in a single city appears to have been carried out. Based on an archaeological and architectural approach, this work at first intended to propose a diachronic synthesis of the evolution of eight public bath buildings currently known in Gerasa and their practice in history. The situation in the City of the Decapolis is then confronted to the practice of public bath in Antiquity in the Middle East, as it is known today, allowing to identify matches, differences and characteristics of the corpus of Gerasa. Based on an original methodology, this study highlights the deeply hybrid role of these institutions with natural facilities for the cleaning of the body but also specific and independent spaces for which civic, political and religious functions may be assumed.
