Petra

It was an Anglo-Swiss traveler, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784 - 1817), that in 1812, going from Damascus to Cairo, heard of an ancient city squeezed between mountains and impenetrable, he decided to go looking for it. Could speak Arabic and thus, the name of Sheik Ibrahim and disguised as a Muslim merchant, said he had made a vow to Allah to sacrifice a goat at the prophet Aaron at his tomb at the top of Jebel Haroun, a high hill overlooking the city chat. With such a history persuaded two natives to guide him through the Siq, a narrow gorge with sheer walls dark, wide in some places a little more than a meter, which winds for nearly a mile of towering blocks of red sandstone and decorated carved. Suddenly, the siq and Burckhardt emerged from obscurity when the first and most sensational monument in the city: the Khazneh, the House Treasury, Nabatean building a bright deep red, so that still contrasts with the surrounding landscape to look like a piece scenario of film left on the site.There Burckhardt drew on his clothes a broad sketch of the building, then did a short tour around the city and at the fall of darkness, he sacrificed a goat at the foot of the Temple of Aaron, before returning to Elji, a mission accomplished. Burckhardt's journals on the discovery of Petra became public only five years after his death in 1822, prompting an uproar, especially in England. And Lawrence of Arabia wrote ... "Petra is the most beautiful place on earth. Not for its ruins [...], but for the color of its rocks, all red and black with green stripes and blue, almost small wrinkles, [ ...] and the forms of its stones and jagged, and its fantastic gorge, where the spring water flows and it [...] is just large enough for a camel to pass [...].I read an endless series of descriptions, but they can not quite give you an idea [...] and I'm sure I'm not even able to do so. So you never know what Petra is in reality, unless there is in person. "These words of Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, emphasized the overwhelming effect that the" complete masterpiece "by Petra has on the visitor, and there was not anyone who could confirm them. The excavations have revealed that the Edomites, the future enemies of the Israelites were settled here as early as the second millennium BC In 500 BC they were later driven out by the Nabataeans, nomads come from the south, which in this place they built their capital. Strategically located at the crossroads between ancient shopping streets, Petra was crowded with merchants who transported their goods from Damascus and Arabia, the Mediterranean and Egypt.Using this city practically impregnable as a base, the Nabataeans controlled the caravan routes and amass wealth, giving rise to a flourishing civilization. The rock was not an issue for this population, so that their principal deity, Dushara, was symbolized by stone blocks and obelisks scattered throughout the siq and a bit 'all over town. In 63 BC, the Romans tried to take over the city struck a sudden assault, but they succeeded in their aim only in 106 AD, when Petra became part, it seems without resistance, of the Roman province of Arabia. Despite the Nabataean dynasty had become extinct, the local population coexisted with Roman for over a century. In the fourth century, when Petra was absorbed by the Byzantine Empire, the Urn Tomb, one of the greatest Nabatean era, was transformed into a church and the city became the seat of a bishopric.But from the seventh century, that the rise of Muslims - except for the brief stay of the Crusaders who build fortified guard posts on two peaks of the surroundings - the story is silent on the fate of Petra, until 1812. Capital of the Nabataean kingdom, declared by UNESCO "World Heritage" and still be reached only on foot or on horseback through the Siq crossed by Burckhardt, Petra is one of the finest in the Middle East, as well as the tourist destination par excellence Jordan. Its most important monument, the Khazneh, the House of the Treasury, despite the research and studies, many mysteries still hidden. It is a temple, a tomb or a cache of riches? The mystery is still thick. Maybe it was all three things together, although the name stems from the legend of the pharaoh's treasure contained in the urn at the top of the monument.For a long time, until the practice was prohibited, the local Bedouins were in the habit of shooting at it with guns, hoping to be overwhelmed by a shower of coins. The building was probably used as grave as the funeral constructions abound in Petra. In the valley and surrounding hills are dotted many: the Urn Tomb of real carved into the side of a cliff, the tombs with beautiful facades in similar buildings, the public burial chambers arranged in the walls, the niches of worship, to the creepy tombs "Well", where criminals were thrown alive.