Petra, Jordan

I know I wrote about some of this in a previous blog but just a few nights ago I watched a brief program about some of the sites in Jordan and I just felt like writing about it because my previous blog was old and also because I couldn't find anything else interesting to write about.


In 1986 I visited Petra and was truly amazed (Sharon and I also visited in about 1988).  At the time I was told by the guide several "stories" about Petra and I learned recently that what I was told was not necessarily true according to recent archaeoligical findings. 


The way I entered Petra was on horseback thru the dark, narrow (9ft wide),  sandstone Siq a natural geological feature formed from a deep split in the sandstone rocks and serving as a waterway flowing into Wadi Musa.  At the end you come to a spectacular view of the "treasury".  I put treasury in quotes because it is not and never was a treasury.  I don't know if you can see it but at the top of the carving there is what looks like a crown and atop of the crown is a pot.  The pot is riddled with bullet marks because the Bedouins thought it was filled with gold and tried shooting it until it broke (there never was gold in it), thus it came to be called the treasury.


The sandstone is very colorful with red, blue, green, brown colors and is easily carved.  There are many "buildings" such as the treasury carved into the mountaisides.  I came to learn (recently) that most of these buildings were tombs and not living quarters.


Petra is situated on the old "spice road" and was a major trading stopover for caravans carrying frankensense and other spices.  The Nabataeans, as it turns out, probably did not creat the buildings themselves.  They were very wealthy because of the spice trade and the fact that they had an abundant supply of water in the middle of a vast desert.  They most likely hired the work to be done by Greeks and others.


Petra (Greek "πέτρα" (petra), meaning rock; Arabic: البتراء, Al-Batrāʾ was established sometime around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans.  The site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812, when it was introduced by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt.


It is spectacular!