Day 5 - Petra

Up early as it’s going to be a long day !
Built sometime between 1550 and 1292 BC as a capital city for the Nabataeans,Petra is a wonder of the ancient world .It lay undiscovered to the modern western world until 1812.
Pictures you have seen and even ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark” aside , the images of the Treasury, the Monastery, and the water channels in the Siq (the approach canyon) don’t really capture it ! The awe-inspiring arrival, Petra’s overpowering geology (endless towering, tangled and twisted multi red coloured rocks), its enormous size with hundreds of tombs, going on for miles !
The approach into Petra takes about an hour on foot. Before you enter the Siq (translates to “shaft” and is the narrow gorge entrance to the city of Petra), there are a few scattered rock tombs — huge cube like forms cut out of sandstone, cliff faces sculpted smooth and vertical, with raised motifs of five steps and Greek style column forms, and dense black tomb openings.
Thus you enter the Siq : narrow, high, huge . You enter from the top, walking onto a gentle, down slope. On each side of the Siq’s narrow, flood sculpted passageway (sometimes 3ft wide, 200ft deep) are waist high water channels, carved along the cliff curves. One channel was used for agriculture, the other for people and animals.
Petra’s architecture : carved niches almost worn away, bench forms, watering troughs and the feet and legs of a sculpted man leading two camels down the Siq.
And then the famous first view of the Treasury framed at the end of the Siq. Even after Little Petra the scale is not what you are expecting .
The Treasury or Al Khazana (which isn’t actually a treasury but probably another necropolis as there is a funeral urn on the top ) is well preserved, and sandy pink and it towers way, way up 40metres ! We arrived mid morning and it’s all in sunshine ! Inside, the large entrance is a vast, perfect cube of space inside the mountain but no one is allowed in these days .The ceiling is not arched but absolutely horizontal, 50 ft square. Decorated with Corinthian capitals and friezes and probably from 1BC .The Treasury is amazing! Great views from above after a shortish climb !

Once into Petra the city begins. First a lengthy necropolis of tombs in the
canyon, then signs of the main city area and the living space metropolitan area of 30,000 people. The tombs are for massive, reaching far up the mountains on each side, crowding and the overlapping accumulating necropolis.
The rock landscape is extensively carved, and much of the carving has eroded to look natural.
We meet the son of a NZ lady who married into the Petra Bedouin at their bookshop - jewellery shop.
Up above are grand Royal
Tombs which multi red black ceilings and ornate frontages.
Past a huge natural theatre that accommodated 4000 people , grander tombs, a Roman colonnade, a Byzantine church , a huge free-standing Great temple with massive pillars and the remains (due to clever earthquake resistant design) of Qasr al-Bint
Then it’s up the mountain via a thousand steps to another huge Treasury type building the Ad Deir or the Monastery!

Another 600 steps on the return will take us to the view from the High Altar of Sacrifice !
It’s mid afternoon and it’s almost 39C or 100F !
We head home , sheltered at first but then on the very bright hot Sun! We have walked over 10 miles !Read more