Tuttle points out piles of rubble that once were free-standing houses, shops and neighborhood temples. A Swiss team recently uncovered, near the crest, an impressive Roman-style villa complete with an elaborate bath, an olive press and frescoes in the style of Pompeii.
At the base of the hill, adjacent to the Great Temple, Leigh-Ann Bedal, a former student of Joukowsky's now at Pennsylvania State University in Erie, uncovered the remains of a large garden. Complete with pools, shade trees, bridges and a lavish pavilion, the lush space—possibly a public park—is thought to have been unique in the southern part of the Middle East.
It resembles the private ornamental gardens built to the north in Judea by Herod the Great, who lived until 4 B. Herod's mother, in fact, was Nabatean, and he spent his early years in Petra. By the fourth century A. Joukowsky takes me on a tour of the newfound spa, which includes marble-lined walls and floors, lead pipes and odd-shaped stalls that might have been toilets, all indications of prosperity. But the growing sea trade to the south had sucked away business, while rival caravan cities to the north such as Palmyra challenged Petra's dominance by land.
Then, on May 19, A. A Jerusalem bishop noted in a letter that "nearly half" of Petra was destroyed by the seismic shock. Scholars long assumed the catastrophe marked the end of the city, but archaeologists have found abundant evidence that Petra remained inhabited, and even prospered, for another three centuries or so.
Almost years after the earthquake, local Christians built a basilica now famed for its beautiful and intact mosaics of animals—including the camel, which made Petra's wealth possible—just across the main street from the Great Temple. Some scrolls—discovered when the church was excavated in —reveal a vibrant community well into the seventh century A. Forgotten for a millennium in its desert fastness, Petra reemerged in the 19th century as an exotic destination for Western travelers.
The first, Swiss adventurer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, visited in when it was still dangerous to be a foreign Christian deep within the Ottoman Empire. Disguised as a Persian pilgrim, he marveled at Petra's wonders but could not linger, since his curiosity aroused the suspicions of his local guides. Petra has lately fulfilled that prophesy.
It is now Jordan's top tourist destination, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. Hollywood's Indiana Jones sought the Holy Grail in one of Petra's caves in a film, dramatizing the site for a worldwide audience. The peace treaty between Jordan and Israel made mass tourism possible. Foreigners began coming to Petra, and devout Jews began making pilgrimages to nearby Jebel Haroun, which, according to tradition, is the site of the prophet Aaron's tomb. The nearby village of Wadi Musa has been transformed from a straggling collection of run-down mud-brick houses into a boomtown of hotels the Cleopetra and stores the Indiana Jones Gift Shop.
Petra is also a top contender in an international contest to name the New Seven Wonders of the World. Candidates were nominated by a panel of experts, and winners will be chosen by votes. You can vote online at new7wonders. Winners are scheduled to be announced next month. Despite all the publicity and the parade of tourists, much of Petra remains untouched by archaeologists, hidden under thick layers of debris and sand built up over the centuries.
No one has found the sites of the busy marketplaces that must have dotted Petra. Scholars know the Nabataeans were in Petra since at least B. Al-Muheisen, who has been excavating in Petra since and specializes in the Nabataean period, says no one has yet found any archaeological evidence dating back to the fourth century B. The earliest findings thus far date back only to the second and first centuries B. But more clues remain beneath the surface.
Numerous scrolls in Greek and dating to the Byzantine period were discovered in an excavated church near the Winged Lion Temple in Petra in December Researchers at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, the capital, are now analyzing the scrolls and hope they will shed light on life in Petra during this period.
Once Rome formally took possession of Petra in A. The decay of the city continued, aided by earthquakes and the rise in importance of sea trade routes, and Petra reached its nadir near the close of the Byzantine Empire's rule, around A. Visitors today can see varying blends of Nabataean and Greco-Roman architectural styles in the city's tombs, many of which were looted by thieves and their treasures thus lost. Today, local Bedouins selling tourist souvenirs hawk their wares not far from the place where Arabs believe Moses struck a rock with his staff, causing water to burst forth.
A person standing in the doorway of the Monastery at Petra, Jordan, shows the enormity of the ancient building's entrance. Carved into the sandstone hill by the Nabataeans in the second century A.
All rights reserved. There are dozens of tombs and other carved or constructed structures and sites within Petra. History The Nabataeans, before they were conquered and absorbed into the Roman Empire, controlled a vast tract of the Middle East from modern-day Israel and Jordan into the northern Arabian peninsula.
The archive was the property of one John Lewis Burckhardt. Born into a wealthy Swiss family in , he became a scholar and explorer, shunning a life of professional responsibility to satisfy an insatiable urge to travel. Until Burckhardt discovered Petra on August 22, , it had remained hidden from western eyes for centuries; the last Europeans to visit the city being Crusaders many hundreds of years prior.
In the interim, it had faded from memory and native inhabitants jealously kept the whole of Wadi Musa - where Petra is situated - guarded from intruders. But discovering the ancient city was not without its dangers.
Among its archives, the University Library has the original manuscript copy of the Minutes of the African Association which details all Burckhardt's exploits as they were reported back to the Committee until his untimely death. It also owns a first edition copies of Travels in Syria and the Holy Land , the published diary of his trip, as well as the rest of his published works.
He also describes the lengths he took to avoid arousing suspicion which could have jeopardised the success of his mission. He was aware that as a foreign traveller, even though disguised in Arab dress, he might provoke distrust and be thought to be a treasure hunter.
One of his biggest fears was being stripped of his journal, his most treasured possession. I therefore pretended to have made a vow to slaughter a goat in honour of Haroun whose tomb is situated in the extremity of the valley and by this stratagem I thought I should have the means of seeing the valley on my way to the tomb.
Here is a man determined to carry out his mission, but also a man of vision with a deep interest in his subject matter. These letters are unresearched and unpublished since they came to the Library in In preparation for the visit he was sent to Cambridge in to learn Arabic and spend time learning a variety of useful practical skills. The archive at the Library contains his Arabic homework notes and writing practice. The Nabateans living and trading in Petra soon accumulated a significant amount of wealth, and an envious Greek Empire attacked the city in B.
This event marks the first reference to Petra in recorded history. The Nabateans successfully fought back the Greek invaders by taking advantage of the mountainous terrain surrounding the city. The mountains effectively served as a natural wall, buttressing Petra. In fact, the Romans would invade Petra in A. The Roman Empire annexed the newly gained territory and changed its name to Arabia Petraea. They continued to rule over the city for more than years until the middle of the fourth century A.
The Byzantines eventually took control of the region, and governed Petra for some years. By the beginning of the eighth century A. Although no longer an important city, Petra has been noted by historians and archeologists for its unique architecture as well as a specific innovation made by the Nabatean Bedouins that established the city. However, the Nabateans took advantage of this geography as they erected its key structures.
As the Nabatean culture evolved, and as the Romans and the Byzantines later sought to leave their own marks on the city, the architecture of Petra began to take on a mix of the different cultures that occupied it. Large and ornate tombs built by the Nabateans eventually gave way to Christian churches constructed by the Byzantines, who considered Petra the capital of the province of Palaestina.
During this evolution, while the Romans ruled the city after the Nabateans and before the Byzantines, the Petra Roman Road was built. This served as the main thoroughfare of Petra, and ornate gates were built, in Roman style, to mark the entrance to the city. As desert dwellers, the Nabateans had long struggled during seasons in which rainfall in the region was limited.
When the tribe built Petra, though, they developed a unique system of conduits, dams and cisterns to harvest, store and distribute rainwater for year-round use.
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