Jordan Times
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Petra: Lost City of
Stone moves to Calvin College next month
By Sarah Ryan
AMMAN — 'Petra: Lost City of Stone,' an exhibition on the ancient rose-red city
and its inhabitants, will soon be moving to its final destination in the United
States, Calvin College, after a sensational six-month run in New York and three
months in Cincinnati.
“The response has been outstanding,” said Gaylen Byker, president of Calvin
College and co-chair of the Petra exhibition. “New York had some of the largest
crowds for a special travelling exhibition,” he added.
In preparation for the opening of the exhibition at the 4,000-student college,
administrators, faculty and supporters have been visiting Petra and other
historic sites in the Kingdom since March 11.
The exhibition has reached such heights of popularity in part due to Petra being
known as a spectacular archaeological and architectural feature, said Byker.
Furthermore, the presentation is extremely well done, he added.
The display includes the most extensive collection of artifacts from Petra
outside of Jordan, video segments of the city, recreations of some of the arches
and doors of Petra along with photographs of the site. Some of the highlights
are the monumental head of the Nabataean god Dushara, a large bronze statue of
the goddess Artemis and a portion of a monumental temple fa?ade featuring
figures from the zodiac.
The very spectacular rock cut tombs make it so fascinating to tourists,” said
Berg de Vries, history professor and head of the archaeology minor at Calvin
College.
“Anyone can come there without knowing anything and find it very spectacular,”
he added. However, the site has also been central in gaining a greater
understanding of Nabataean culture. The fact that the pottery found in the tombs
of the site can be dated so accurately has increased archaeologists' grasp of
the historical sequence Nabataean culture followed, de Vries explained.
Furthermore, excavations of the hundreds of rock-cut tombs have enabled a better
understanding of their history, he added.
The exhibition at Calvin College, running from April 4- Aug. 15, will contain an
additional section dealing with aspects of recent Jordanian history such as
traditional clothing, textiles, jewellery and foods.
“We put the exhibition in the context of the traditional culture of recent
Jordan so people can appreciate the ancient Jordanian site of Petra and the
Nabataeans and associate this with Jordan as it is today,” said de Vries.
This final exhibition in the US will also have more of an educational focus than
the previous ones at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and
the Cincinnati Art Museum, said June Hamersma, co-chair of the exhibition.
Calvin College has held workshops with 7,000 teachers in western Michigan to
prepare them for the display and plans to hold weekly archaeological digs for
children, she explained.
Petra emerged as a powerful city state in the 2nd century BC gaining riches due
to its placement at the crossroad between the silk and spice routes. The city
thrived for 400 years on trade with China, India, Greece and Rome.
The exhibition is organised by the American Museum of Natural History and the
Cincinnati Art Museum, in cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism and
Department of Antiquities. After the Calvin College, the exhibition will move on
to Calgary and Ottawa in Canada.