Petra: A City Carved Out of Rock

South of Jordan is a mysterious ruin that is astonishing. It is legend that the ancient Bedouin tribes believed that This beautiful place was a storehouse for Pharaoh’s great riches that had been concealed here by a powerful black magician.

An ancient treasure, hidden behind an almost impenetrable barrier of rugged mountains, Petra is full of mysterious charm and incomparable beauty. It has been said that there is no other site in the world that is equal to Petra. The legacy of the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who settled in southern Jordan more than 2000 years ago, Petra has an ingenious complex of dams and water channels throughout the city That attest to the architectural skill of this ancient people.

Perhaps the most famous monument in Petra, the treasury building is a stunning piece of architecture that is captivating as you gaze on it’s facade carved with images of Nabataean deities and mythological characters.The original purpose of this building was not as a treasury but more likely as a tomb or possibly a temple.

Image via Wikipedia

Most of Petra’s deities were associated with the underworld and death. The City itself is full of tombs and the treasury is a cornucopia of funerary symbolism carved on the facade certainly leading to some association with the dead.

Sela, is a location known today as Petra – located approximately 50 miles south of the eastern side of the Dead Sea. As a highly defensible location it was the capital of Edom, whose territory stretched northward to the Dead Sea. Access to the Valley where Petra is located is generally through the eastern ridge via the Sig/Sik (”cleft”), a narrow, winding geologic fissure through the rock.

The earliest inhabitants of this area now known as Petra were the Horites, or Hurrians. Later, Esau, the brother of Jacob, settled in the territory south of the Dead Sea, and his descendants, the Edomites, gradually replaced the Hurrians. The Edomites lived here when Israel came from Egypt during the Exodus, about 1445 BC. About 400 BC, the Edomites were driven out by the Arabian Nabataeans. The Nabataeans built beautiful palaces, temples, theatres, and tombs hewn out of solid rock. The inhabitants of this phenomenal city worshiped many Gods but mainly the sun. And as part of their worship they offered human sacrifices.

The city is located near Mount Hor which is the location in scripture, where Aaron the brother of Moses is said to have died. This is generally believed to be true by The Jews and Arabs in the region. A 14th century mosque stands there with its white dome visible from most areas in and around Petra.

Knowledge of Petra was lost to the Western world until Swiss explorer John Lewis Burckhardt tricked his Bedouin guides into leading him there in 1812. After spending several years learning Arabic and studying the tenets of Islam, Burckhardt, who passed himself off as a Muslim from India. By claiming he wished to make a sacrifice at the tomb of Aaron which was nearby, he gained entry to the legendary forgotten city of Petra. He recorded all that he saw and opened up the mystery of an ancient legend to the rest of the world.