Jordan Times
Saturday, December 12, 1998
'Stunning' exhibition on Petra opens in Washington
By George S. Hishmeh
WASHINGTON — A “wonderful idea” is how HRH Princess Sarvath responded
recently to a question raised by the Jordan Times about whether the “stunning”
exhibition featuring artefacts from Petra will go on tour elsewhere in the United States
and Canada.
Princess Sarvath officially opened the exhibit, entitled “Petra: Jordan's City in the Rock,” on Dec. 9 at Explorers Hall Museum of the National Geographic Society headquarters in downtown Washington, a few blocks from the White House. The exhibit coincided with the publication of an 18-page cover essay in this month's issue of National Geographic on the ancient city, once the capital of the Nabataeans.
Winged statuettes in bronze, terra cotta figures, ceramic jugs, storage jars, oil lamps, Nabataean coins and 1,400-year-old scrolls were among the many artefacts on display in the Explorers Hall for the first time in the United States.
Arabic coffee was served by two Jordanians in bedouin clothes inside an actual tent while two women in traditional dress baked “shrak” bread for the VIP visitors, who included John Fahey, president of National Geographic Society, as well as various staffers from National Geographic who were involved in the cover story.
Other sponsors of the exhibit included the American Center for Oriental Research, the Petra National Trust and the Jordan Badia Research and Development Programme, a government project to improve quality of life through sustainable development.
In addition to the artefacts there was a display of how the ancient Nabataeans, rulers of the lands east of the Jordan River 2,000 years ago, constructed a sophisticated water network to supply their desert outposts; a reproduction of a mosaic floor of a Byzantine church, and enlarged photographs of some of Petra's monumental facades.
The exhibit, originally slated to be held here only, will run through Feb. 7.
In her remarks, Princess Sarvath said she was “overwhelmed by the magnificence” of this month's cover article, `Petra: Ancient City of Stone',” as well as “this stunning exhibition.” She added that she did not realise that the exhibit would be “so breathtaking.”
“This exhibition provides an opportunity to recognise the achievements of this gifted people, and to shed some light on their extremely sophisticated culture which is so exquisitely demonstrated before us,” the Princess said.
Early works, the Princess added, did not make “a significant contribution” to understanding the history of Petra, which was rediscovered in 1812, or the history of the Nabataeans. The attention of the scholars was restricted to funerary architecture and art.
“Since the fifties of this century,” she said, “several archaeological excavations have been carried out which helped redress the balance, and the Nabataeans began to emerge as builders for the living as well as the dead.” Yet, she pointed out, the research overlooked the centuries of both growth and decline and only focused on the rather short period of peak prosperity between the first century B.C. and the first century A.D.
“It is only recently with the discovery of two churches and a cache of papyri scrolls that we began to learn for sure something about the history of Petra in the Byzantine period, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman eastern empire.”
Underlining that the carved facades of the rose red city may still hold many secrets, she stressed that the Nabataean accomplishments include “the contrasts of fired pottery of egg-shell thinness and monumental facades with imposing carvings hewn out of solid rock.”
However, the Princess said their “most impressive achievement is to be seen in the area of water and soil conservation.”
But very little has changed over 3,000 years, she noted. “Now, as then, political stability is the key to any kind of human development, be it in trade, agriculture or education, and now, as then, we need to make decisions with our hearts as well as our heads. In identifying and understanding our past, we will know better how to consolidate our present, and build our future in terms of human needs, physically, emotionally and materially. None of us can ever know where we are going until we know where we are coming from.”
Minister of Tourism Akel Biltaji was upbeat in his brief remarks about tourism prospects in Jordan. He said there was a slight increase in the number of visitors to Jordan, mainly from the Arab Gulf region. Visitors in 1998 totalled 1.4 million compared to 1.2 million in the preceding year, “and we will be closing with $850 million in returns” for this year compared to $790 million,” thereby making tourism the second largest export industry.
He expressed hope that the industry would be “the number one [earner] by the year 2000.”
Biltaji thanked the Society for assisting Jordan “in coming out here and taking Petra to the whole world.”
“If we were to do it ourselves, we could not afford it, so we are grateful for the Society having helped us on this particular issue.”
In his welcoming remarks, Fahey expressed his gratitude for Jordan's “generous support” in making the exhibit possible. “This is a wonderful way to share Jordan's national treasurers with people everywhere — and fully in keeping with Her Royal Highness' promotion of education as a means of greater international understanding.”
Fahey noted that the National Geographic Society “has long been fascinated with Jordan and Petra in particular,” pointing out that Petra was introduced to the magazine's readers in 1907, “and we described it as `one of the strangest, most beautiful and most enchanting spots upon this earth'.”
“Nothing has changed since,” he added.