While archaeologists have been exhuming and rehabilitating ever more sites, sometimes controversially, along the eastern Mediterranean that testify to the splendor of Rome,s empire at its zenith, today they are followed in many instances by entrepreneurs and civic authorities who use these ancient theatres, temples and arenas for living performances and spectacles, thus in a sense, completing a revival. From such remote reminders of past glories as the “lost” city of Petra in the Jordanian desert…
—Petra is considered the most famous and gorgeous site in Jordan located about 262 km south of Amman and 133 km north of Aqaba. It is the legacy of the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who settled in southern Jordan more than 2000 years ago. Admired then for its refined culture, massive architecture and ingenious complex of dams and water channels, Petra is now a UNESCO world heritage site and one of The New 7 Wonders of the World that enchants visitors from all corners of the globe.—click image for source…
One of the last to be restored and one of the remotest is Petra, Jordan’s “rose-red city, half as old as Time,” whre audiences now fill its amphitheatre after a break of almost seventeen centuries. A thieves’ stronghold in 500 B.C., later the secluded capital of the nomadic Nabateans, Petra was conquered by Trajan in A.D. 106 to become one of the Roman Empire’s most influential outposts.
Petra’s appeal to thieves, nomads, and Romans alike was its impregnability and its proximity to caravan trade routes: mean and treasure could enter it only through the easily defended Siq, a narrow defile whose sheer walls rise 300 feet high. According to legend, this crevasse opened when it was struck by the rod of Moses.Petra’s appeal to visitors today, though, comes from monumental edifices sculpted from the living sandstone.
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In 1812, when the Swiss explorer Johann Burckhardt entered As-Siq, the narrow gorge that runs into the heart of Petra, he was disguised as a Muslim and leading a sacrificial goat. He feigned lack of interest in rumours of a rock-cut city – knowing that local guides would be unwilling to reveal it to an outsider – and instead invented a pretext of making an offering at Aaron’s hilltop tomb. Nevertheless, he was unable to disguise his astonishment when he set eyes on the now-famous façade of the treasury (becoming the first European since the crusaders to do so), arousing the suspicions of his guide, who drew a rifle on him.
Today’s tourists need no such subterfuge. Instead they will find a visitor centre, rows of souvenir shops and numerous touts offering carriage rides through the Siq. It’s hardly the most atmospheric introduction to the site. But there is another way, a “back door” from the north rather than the east, one that can be reached at the end of a five-day trek along ancient Bedouin migration routes and shepherd trails. Read More:http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7e0541fc-7c29-11e2-99f0-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2UGBUZvhC
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