Sunday, January 11, 2004
WONDERS OF THE WORLD--THE SEVEN WONDERS OF MAN
A city carved in stone
Sculpted tombs and temples in Petra fill an ancient
metropolis with mystery
By Robert Cross
Tribune staff reporter
And Wadi Musa is the modern municipality that lies just outside Petra, a town where people stop on their way to see Petra's collection of incredible tombs carved into the rocks of southern Jordan hundreds of years ago.
So the next thing after the first things is the experience of coming upon Petra and feeling its hidden magnificence suddenly overwhelm you. That's the draw attracting people from all over the world to witness Jordan's most dramatic site.
Ibrahim Abdelhaq, our Jordanian guide, led the way. We took a short walk
from the Movenpick Hotel in Wadi Musa through a small bazaar with
souvenirs for sale, then past a gate and a stop at the ticket window. We
took a longer walk along a road, while next to us horsemen on a separate
bridle path offered us a ride to the entrance of the Siq.
We hiked instead. The Siq has a meaning too. It's another kind of valley,
narrow and dark with sandstone walls rising more than 30 stories on either
side. Before we got there, Ibrahim pointed out monuments called the Djinn
Blocks and a giant tomb marked by four massive obelisks--they were hewn
from the very cliffs that lined our path. "You can spend more time
with those on the way back, if you want," he said.
I didn't want to examine the structures just then, because I knew that
Petra, the magnificent remains of an ancient city, would be appreciated
best without foreshadowing of any kind.
Just let it hit.
The Siq closed in, too small for any beasts of burden, except the ponies
pulling an occasional cart reserved for those physically unable to make
the trek. During the 3/4-mile of passageway, Ibrahim and I occasionally
had to walk single-file. My wife, Juju, fell far behind, taking pictures
and exposing videotape.
She caught up just in time to see a remarkable fragment of bas-relief on
the pale-yellow wall--a man's boots standing in front of a set of camel's
hooves, slightly larger than life-size. Also, a curve of camel hump, a
portion of camel belly. All quite realistic, even though the rest of the
picture had eroded away. Ibrahim said that particular artistic effort had
been covered by water until after a major flood in 1996 forced officials
to reconfigure part of the passageway. "Before that, nobody knew it
was here."
We heard voices as we rounded a bend. Ibrahim walked ahead and yelled back
to us, "Get ready!"
Just as the rocky, rough Siq closed in, narrower than ever, we could see an expanse of daylight and then part of a totally anomalous entity--an elaborate facade, orange/pink in the late-morning sun, with two tiers of Corinthian columns, exquisite ornamentation, plus sculptures depicting gods, goddesses and figures from mythology.
It was an exquisite Hellenistic edifice somehow dropped from a distant Acropolis onto a Near Eastern valley cut through a vast, rough and barren desert plateau.
Chicago
Tribune
Online Edition
Petra, City of Stone
Location:
Southwestern Jordan, between the Red Sea on the south and the Dead
Sea on the north.
Size: About 40 square miles, but main sights are in a compact
area.
Population: Petra is no longer officially populated. A
separate town has been built for natives who used to occupy the
surrounding caves.
Geography: Sandstone hills and broad desert plateaus, cleft
by valleys.
Ancient name for Nabateans: Arabians.
Source of Nabatean wealth: Control of the trade routes
bringing silks and spices from points farther east.
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A small crowd clustered at the end of the Siq, and all of us took turns shooting the classic picture of that facade--known as the Treasury: Half of its highly decorated, almost delicate face framed by the jagged, shadowy near-tunnel from whence we came.
"This is called the Treasury, but it never was a treasury," Ibrahim said. "The locals in the old times, more than 100 years ago, they used to shoot at it because they thought there was gold or treasure in that urn near the roof. There's nothing in the urn. It is a solid piece."
I could make out the bullet holes. But the elements had done most of what little damage there was, softening the features on the spear-bearing statues of mythological warriors, the equestrians Castor and Pollux (sons of Zeus); marring the symbol of the Egyptian goddess Isis that crowns the pediment; and dulling the once-sharp detail of the Corinthian columns. Still, the overall effect remains stunning: a gorgeous thing carved by hand with incredible precision--and a wonderful example of the Hellenistic influences that spread across a large portion of the Arabian Peninsula during the adventures of Alexander the Great, around 312 B.C.
Ibrahim pointed out the vertical rows of tiny squares along both sides. They were used to anchor some kind of scaffolding, he told me. Craftsmen started at the top and worked their way down.
"Basically it's a tomb that is dated at the 1st Century B.C.," Ibrahim said.
Some experts differ and say it may have been a shrine. The full name of the building is Khaznat Far'oun, or Pharaoh's Treasury, derived from the ancient belief that a powerful sorcerer cum pharaoh created Petra's beautiful structures and then used the urn as a cache for his treasure.
The Bedouins who shot at the urn certainly were mistaken, but later generations have gleaned treasure from the tourists who come and buy their souvenirs and pay for rides on their camels, horses and donkeys. I had half expected some kind of reverence or serenity in Petra, but it was noisy with salesmanship and, even on this slow day, bustling with visitors.
It did feel like a city, although Ibrahim insisted that the portions we would see, at least, had become an elaborate necropolis. In the upper portions, he said, were places "for doing the weirdest rituals ever heard of in the history of mankind. We're not quite sure if they buried the dead bodies or they cremated. And most believe they did both. It was a different civilization."
At the Treasury, our guide pointed out a channel leading from a basin. "That was not for water drainage," he said ominously. "That was for blood. There may have been sacrifices--human or animal, I don't know." Again, some experts take a more sanguine view--in the sense of optimistic or cheerful--and guess that it might be the tomb of a king named Aretas III, who reigned from 85-62 B.C.
Most of what's left of Petra for people to see is a sort of "downtown" dotted mostly with facades carved into the stone walls that once flanked the Wadi Musa stream, a now-extinct waterway. Some of the tombs are so shallow that their occupants were interred standing up.
The craftsmanship all over Petra reflects the Hellenistic influences that traveled with Arabian traders as they made their way back and forth to and from ancient Greece through the Arabian Peninsula. Caravans loaded with frankincense, myrrh and other precious commodities passed near Petra, and the city's founders, the Nabateans, were said to have exacted great wealth by levying tolls and taxes on those shipments.
Between the 6th and 4th Centuries B.C., the Nabateans, originally largely nomadic and widely known simply as Arabs, began to settle in what is now southern Jordan. While other powerful kingdoms were expanding their territory in the region, the Nabateans remained independent, protected in their capital city, Petra, an ideal fortress.
Invaders would have to arrive through the narrow and well-guarded Siq, or drop down from the heights of surrounding mountains and plateaus, so they found other communities easier to conquer. On the outskirts, the Nabateans had built another sort of town, now called Little Petra, a more open place, a sort of commercial strip also carved into hillsides and architecturally brilliant. There members of caravans could rest in hollowed-out, cave-like enclosures, some of them decorated with ceiling murals. They were the Motel 6's of their day.
The Nabateans stayed independent all through the Hellenistic Age, which lasted from the 8th Century B.C. to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.
At the height of its prosperity, Big Petra boasted luxurious houses and lush gardens, temples and statuary honoring the god Dushara. These were constructed in more conventional ways and scattered on the margins of the rock-carved "downtown." Petra thrived through the reigns of several kings. But wealth and influence reached a peak under Aretas IV (8 B.C. to A.D. 40) in the time of emperor Augustus and King Herod of Judea.
Besides the ornately chiseled structures--now tombs--along the walls, Nabatean engineers gouged a network of water channels in the sandstone, installed earthenware pipes, constructed dams and built cisterns to supply water for the city and to irrigate outlying farms.
Roman emperor Trajan finally usurped the Nabatean rulers in A.D. 106. Petra then became part of the Roman province of Arabia and lost its status as a capital to Bosra. Starting in the 290s A.D., Petra began slipping into a gradual decline. Earthquakes in the 4th and 6th Centuries destroyed most of the free-standing houses and crumbled parts of some tombs. Around this time, Christianity was taking root. By the 12th Century, when Crusaders occupied parts of the region and built a few forts that still stand, Petra had virtually disappeared from the consciousness of outsiders.
During a long journey around the Middle East and Africa, Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt managed to find Petra based on scattered scraps of information. People in the area distrusted the occasional strangers who showed up looking for ancient treasures. In 1812, Burckhardt reached the heart of Petra by convincing locals he was on a pilgrimage to the nearby mountaintop tomb of Moses' brother Aaron. Still, Burckhardt's "discovery" wasn't widely known until after the posthumous publication of his journal, "Travels in Syria and the Holy Land."
Scientific study of the region did not get under way until 1865. Organized archeological digs began in 1929.
Present-day visitors become even more overwhelmed after they recover from their encounter with the Treasury and begin walking in a westerly direction past scores of those structures chiseled out of the hillside sandstone. Some are almost like plain slabs with a few geometric designs. Others resemble the kind of monumental edifices depicted in storybooks. For example, a grouping called the Royal Tombs, which stars an artistically worked structure known as the Urn Tomb, has nearly as much mind-boggling detail as the Treasury itself.
An urn sits atop the pediment and towers above a series of steps and terraces--all, of course, fashioned directly out of the hillside.
Al Deir, or the Monastery, is another large tomb, equally detailed, that actually did serve as a monastery during the Christian Byzantine period in the 4th Century. Another wonder in a collection of wonders.
With Ibrahim leading the way we strolled along the Street of Facades, a series of slab-like tombs, then climbed up the immense, 7,000-seat theater--each row, again, carved into a hillside, first by the Nabateans and later somewhat reconfigured by the Romans.
We walked along the Colonnaded Street, a Nabatean thoroughfare embellished by the Romans with columns, a fountain and scant remains of shops and houses.
Toward the end of the street, we looked at the ruins of Qasr al Bint, "Palace of the Pharaoh's Daughter," one of the few free-standing buildings in central Petra that might be traced as far back as Nabatean times. Not much of the temple stands now, but enough to convey its former grandeur and suggest its role as a major gathering place for deity worship across the centuries.
Ibrahim left us to meet with some colleagues at the Basin Restaurant. Juju and I climbed to a little museum punched into yet another hillside. We were told the cave once served as a dwelling, as did many of the caves in and around Petra. Cave-dwellers in recent years have been sent away to nearby villages built expressly for them, leaving Petra officially unpopulated.
The deeply tanned and slow-moving museum caretaker offered us some tea, and then resumed his place in a little conversational grouping on the museum's veranda.
We found enough artifacts on the shelves and in the glass-covered display cases to evoke the civilizations that had made Petra their home over the centuries: Utensils, goblets, small figurines and the like. A few pieces from the collection have been loaned to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for an exhibit, "Petra: Lost City of Stone," running through July 6.
"We will never see those things again," said a young man sitting on the veranda. Another young man nodded agreement. We scoffed, of course, but they were adamant.
Later, at the restaurant, we told Ibrahim about that conversation. "They're wrong, of course," he said. "But I can understand how they feel. A lot of things have disappeared from Petra over the years. But this is a different time."
Juju and I lingered for three more hours, taking pictures; bargaining with vendors for guidebooks, postcards and souvenirs; watching camels galloping past with the owner and a tourist sharing the saddle.
So in a way, during the day, Petra has life as a city again, a place where people can go and reflect on the passage of time, the vagaries of architectural fashion, the changing nature of faith and the human ingenuity that could create and decorate such a place.
It was nearly dark when we took one last look at the Treasury and walked through the Siq. The horse people waited at the other end, hoping we stragglers would join them for a ride back to the visitor center (and leave a generous tip). As Juju and I walked the rest of the way toward the hotel, wranglers and horses tore back and forth along the bridle path beside our sidewalk, raising dust, galloping hard just for the hell of it. The men yelled at their mounts, and pleaded with our small band of visitors to hop on a saddle and join in the fun,
We didn't, but we appreciated their colorful and probably unwitting evocation of old, old Arabia.
Petra has had quite a ride.
E-mail Robert Cross: bcross@tribune.com
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