Legends about the ancient Nabotean city lost among the rocks and sands have excited the minds of European scientists and travelers since the time of the Crusaders. These lands in the Middle Ages were controlled by fierce Bedouin tribes, and therefore their inaccessibility further fueled the imagination, until finally, almost by accident, Petra was discovered by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Wurdhard.
Hoping to find the lost city, he set out with a caravan from Damascus to Cairo. At the end of August 1812, the traveler found himself not far from the supposed location of Petra. Since Wurdhard spoke excellent Arabic, was dressed like a nomad and generally pretended to be a Muslim Ibrahim-ibn-Abdullah, it was not difficult for him to ask the local Arabs to take him to the grave of his brother Moses, the prophet Aaron, who was buried, according to legend, on the top of one from the mountains, ostensibly for sacrifices.
To the surprise of Wurdhard, the Bedouin led him into the mountains, which from a distance seemed completely insurmountable, but when approaching them in one of the rocks, a narrow passage into a deep gorge suddenly appeared. After a 20-minute walk along the bottom of the winding canyon, the astonished Swiss saw the grandiose ruins of the dead city, in which he recognized Petra, the lost capital of the Nabotei. He was so delighted with this discovery that he almost betrayed himself, but the deed was done and Wurdhard turned out to be the first European in the last 600 years to see this wonder of the world.
Little is known about the nabotes today. They themselves did not leave any written evidence about themselves. All we know about them is stories told by visiting travelers many hundreds of years ago, or scanty data from archaeological excavations. By the way, today only about 15% of the territory has been explored in detail in Petra, so it is not known what other discoveries await us in the future. Although these excavations are unlikely to shed light on the origin of the nabotei.
Some consider them to be simple nomads who settled in this convenient place solely because of its favorable geographical position: for a long time, the main caravan routes connecting Europe, Asia and Africa passed here. Others disagree with this, pointing to the too extensive knowledge of the nabotes in the field of agriculture and irrigation. Still others call them the ancestral home of Assyria, the north of the Arabian Peninsula, and even Yemen. There are many theories, but it is difficult to understand which one is correct. One way or another, but it is known for sure that the first ruler of the Nabotean kingdom was Aretas I, who ascended the throne in 169 BC. But the history of the state in the rocks, of course, did not begin from this moment. It is reliably known that in 312 BC. e. it already existed: this is what the Greek sources say. It was in this year that the Greek army, led by Antigonos, made an unsuccessful campaign against Petra. Most likely, the rise of the state began with the ascension of the first ruler, which reached its apogee by 106 AD. BC, when the last Nabotean ruler, King Ravel II, died. Taking advantage of this moment, Rome was able to easily annex an overly rich and prosperous kingdom to its empire. Petra became part of the Roman province of Arabia.
With the conquest of the city to Rome, its imperceptible extinction began, which lasted 300 long years. The fact is that the nabotei were, in a way, customs officers, or border guards: they collected tribute from the caravans passing by. Doing this for centuries, they have accumulated their fabulous riches, the fame of which haunted many generations of treasure hunters. But then the rise of another "pearl" of the Middle East - Palmyra began. The caravans took different paths, and the inhabitants of Petra could only regret the lost greatness and power.
Petra managed to be part of Byzantium, until two terrible earthquakes in 363 and 747 finally finished her off. During the rule of the Arabs and the Crusades, the city was already dead, and only the search for treasures, which should have been hidden somewhere here, continued to attract a variety of adventurers here. Since that time, numerous traces of bullets have remained on the main symbol of Petra - the treasury: the Bedouins believed that if you hit the right place on the stone treasury, then a golden rain would fall on them. Alas, he did not spill, although who knows, maybe they were shooting in the wrong place. It is possible that the mysterious treasures of Nabothea lie somewhere in pink ruins, because no one has ever seen valuables taken out of the city.