Monday 11th March 2013 +4.0hrs GMT: Aqaba, Jordan ­ So What & Where is Petra?

The history of Petra and its inhabitants the Nabataeans, despite recent research and excavations in the city is very complex and there is a dearth of documentary evidence describing the culture of this ancient civilisation.  What is clear today is that Petra was a major city and that most of the buildings were tombs and temples.  Below is a highly summarised statement of some of key facts about Peter abstracted from “Petra: The Art, The History and the Nature” by Mohammad Frahan and published by Jordan Book Rack.

Petra – the Greek word for rock – was in ancient Aramaic (From the Greek Aramaios – ‘of Aram’ – the biblical name for Syria) times called Raqmu – meaning coloured and is located in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan about 250 kilometres south of its capital Amman.  It is surrounded by the Al Shirah range of mountains that stretch from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea and at an altitude of between 800 to 1340 metres overlooking Wadi Araba, itself part of the Great Rift Valley Africa.  So the tombs and temples at Petra have been damaged many times by earthquakes.

The first remains discovered in the area have been dated to the Neolithic period between the seventh and eighth centuries BC. It is known that Semitic (From the Greek Sëm “Shem”, son of Noah in the bible) peoples lived in the mountains in the 6^th century BC. Historians believe the Nabataeans were travellers from the Arabian Peninsular who spoke a language close to Aramaic. An educated and ingenious people they carved channels and water cisterns into the rock to bring water from the Wadi Musa - a source to the north of Petra – and distribute it amongst their temples and residential areas  (See Photo that also shows some of the original roadway through the Sik).

Petra was on the caravan route running from what is today Yemen to the Mediterranean Sea. Caravans laden with Frankincense, gold and silk would rest at Petra and in return for their hospitality the Nabataeans imposed a tax on all goods.  As the city prospered the Nabataeans built temples to honour their Gods and Kings.

The Nabataeans were forced to defend this wealth against their envious neighbours: the Jews, Greeks and Romans. The emergence of Islam in the seventh century was a turning point in the fortunes of Petra since it was not on the pilgrimage route to Mecca so with the decline in caravan routes and struck by earthquakes in the eighth century the city was abandoned and fell into oblivion.