Everyone knows the seven wonders of the world. But few people know that at the end of the last century, this list was replenished with another surprisingly mysterious, well-preserved object of antiquity - the capital of the Nabataean kingdom - the city of Petra (stress on the first syllable).
This mysterious city is located on the territory of modern Jordan. It was erected by ancient architects more than 2 thousand years ago. The city of Petra is included in the list of especially valuable objects of UNESCO. In translation, the word "Petra" sounds like "stone". The peculiarity of this city is that all its buildings are carved into the rocks. For Jordan, this place is the most profitable business and the most visited tourist destination - about 4 thousand people come to admire the amazing temples of Petra every day.
Jordan is very poor in tourist facilities - 90% of the territory is occupied by lifeless desert, mountains and hills. For travelers who like very unusual places in Jordan, there is another interesting area - Wadi Rum (desert among the rocks). Jordan is very poor - there are no mineral resources, huge unemployment among the population, animal husbandry is reduced only to the maintenance of recreational walking donkeys and camels. And amid this poverty, there are a large number of portraits of the reigning king Abdullah and his many brothers.
But back to the temples of the ancient city of Petra. The most important of them is Al-Khazneh. It is located very well. The road to it is a narrow gorge carved into the rocks. To enter the temple, you need to walk a two-kilometer winding path among the rocks. At the exit of their gorge, a view of the amazing beauty of the columns of a two-story temple made of pink stone, as if imprinted into the body of a huge rock, opens unexpectedly. The width of the temple is 28 meters, and the height is 39 meters. There is no exit from the top floor of the temple. Numerous rectangles of niches were initially completely empty, but over time, by order of the rulers who succeeded each other on the throne of the kingdom, figures of ancient gods were carved into the niches. The Arabs also gave this temple their names - "treasury of the pharaohs" and "temple-mausoleum". The original purpose of the temple could not be determined, but there is an assumption that the temple was dedicated to the goddess Isis, since the architects used the techniques of Egyptian Alexandria during its construction.
Previously, Petra was a very rich and densely populated city, as it stood on the Great Silk Road. In the architecture of the ancient city in the rocks, you can see fragments inherent in the ancient Egyptians, ancient Romans and ancient Greeks. The two citadels in the heart of Petra appear to have been built by the Crusaders. Petra also houses a Roman amphitheater with 3,000 seats. There are many stone residential buildings in the city, as well as buildings carved into the rocks, presumably for administrative and entertainment purposes. The purpose of the numerous burrows and caves in the rocks is not entirely clear. Therefore, it was suggested that Petra (at some stage of its existence) was the city of the dead (burial place), but no remains confirming this version were found, although for two thousand years they could have been irretrievably lost.
It should be said with confidence that until now most of the mysteries of the ancient city of Peter have not been solved. For example, there is a hypothesis that the city was built by the Nabateans. This group of Semitic tribes who lived in this area in 400 BC. The Nabateans had their own writing (the alphabet is similar to Hebrew and Aramaic) and language. The Nabateans worshiped idols and brought their religious beliefs to Petra. The surviving writings of the Greek Diodorus (1st century BC) describe the Nabataeans as a very warlike tribe. Almost all the men of the tribe were warriors. They did not farming, building houses, or drinking wine. Violation of this set of rules was punishable by death. Diodorus wrote: “Earlier the Nabateans lived quietly, receiving food from cattle breeding, but when the Alexandrian kings launched merchant shipping,the Nabateans began not only to attack the shipwrecked, but they also began to build pirate ships and plunder those sailing on the sea. According to the Greek, the Nabateans were not so much warriors as robbers and pirates. It is surprising that, having a written language, the Nabateans did not leave a single inscription in the churches of Petra, not a single written source of the Nabateans has yet been found. Historians learned about the existence of the Nabataean tribe from the Bible and from the records of Diodorus and Josephus. Historians learned about the existence of the Nabataean tribe from the Bible and from the records of Diodorus and Josephus. Historians learned about the existence of the Nabataean tribe from the Bible and from the records of Diodorus and Josephus.
In the book "History of the Ancient East" (ed. K. Uzishchin) it is said about the Nabataean tribe: "These peoples still had tribal relations dominating. There were tribal unions and small states. Perhaps some of them can be called principalities, for example Nabatea. In Assyrian documents, their rulers were usually called "kings", apparently by analogy with the rulers of other states, but it would be more legitimate to call them "sheikhs." Sometimes, instead of "kings", tribal unions were headed by "queens", which probably indicates the preservation of remnants of matriarchy."
But if the Nabateans were pirates or robbers, well, in extreme cases, merchants, then who built this amazing city? By whose order was it erected? What was the purpose of this construction? If cult, then why are there no indications of the details of the cult in the buildings of the city?
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Historians know that there is no temple building without a state. And the state always leaves some traces of its writing or documents. For example, the Sumerians left us a large library of clay tablets, ancient Egypt - papyri, stone steles and mathematics textbooks, Maya - hieroglyphs. But from the Nabataeans - nothing. Their rulers didn't even bother to perpetuate their memory!
Since there is no reliable information about the tribe of warriors, many guides mislead tourists, claiming that “Cutting cave inside the rocks of the correct shape, they (Nabataeans) received a suite of residential and other premises. This is how Petra appeared - a city carved in stone."
The first European to visit the city-in-the-rock was the Swiss Johan Burchard (1784-1817). It is known that Burkhard was a devout pilgrim, converted to Islam in his youth, knew Arabic. He called himself Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdullah. The purpose of his travels was not a desire to make geographical discoveries, but a visit to the many holy places of Islam. It was on one of his travels that he came across Petra. His notes in French became documentary evidence of the city's existence in the rocks. In the British Encyclopedia of 1911 there is a reference to the centenary of the discovery of Petra: "During his residence in Syria, he (Burkhard) visited Palmyra, Damascus, Lebanon and from there traveled through Petra to Cairo." The first sketches of Petra were seen in Europe thanks to the works of the Scottish artist David Roberts in the 1840s.
Today the project "Ancient Petra" is a well-promoted commercial project. One of the episodes of the adventure film about Indiana Jones was filmed in the gorge and temples of Petra.
And although Petra is a source of income for Jordan, it must be admitted that the presence of a well-preserved ancient object, which is under the protection and protection of the state, gives everyone the opportunity to enjoy the unusual architecture created by ancient architects.
