Remember when you were told that that place in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was real? I do, and I remember thinking that Jordan seemed an awfully distant place which I wasn’t sure at all that I would ever visit. The Nabataean ruins of Petra clearly represent a pinnacle in rock-cut architecture, certainly in size and scale if not in beauty; in some ways the city is like a fantasy that shows man’s imagination at some of its best. The site is well deserving of its reputation and fame, if not only for the impressiveness of the manmade structures themselves, for the drama and mystery of their setting.
I do not have much else to say about Petra, but to go without showing you at least some pictures of the site would be a crime. Before the photos, a tiny bit of historical background: Petra was the capital of the Nabataeans, an Aramaic-speaking Semitic kingdom that by location was able to control trade routes between the Levant and points further east. Petra continued as a fairly prosperous city even after the Nabataeans were subsumed by the Romans around 100 AD, and survived as a Christian town, but fell into ruin around the time of the seventh century Arab conquest.
The Siq, the canyon leading into the “city center” of Petra
The Treasury, the most imposing and dramatic of Petra’s structures, cut into the cliff at a clearing and bend in the canyon
Inside of the Treasury, a largely blank set of rooms cut into beautiful stone
Some other examples of the marvelous natural colors and patterns of Petra sandstone
Other facades, near the Treasury
The Great Temple, located in Petra’s “city center”
The Palace Tomb. Most of Petra’s structures are rock-cut facades with small, relatively blank rooms inside. While some of these were used as churches later in Petra’s history, and the Bedouin made them homes in more recent times, it would seem that most were originally intended as tombs.
The Monastery, located well uphill from the Siq and city center–even larger than the Treasury
There are Nabataean rock-cut trails all over Petra, connecting the various “buildings” to vantage points and “high places” used for worship.
