Petra one of Seven Wonders of the World

Petra

• Brief History of Petra
• The location of Petra

Petra (from the Greek, meaning 'rock') lies in a great rift valley east of Wadi 'Araba in Jordan about 80 kilometers south of the Dead Sea. It came into prominence in the late first century BCE (BC) through the success of the spice trade. The city was the principal city of ancient Nabataea and was famous above all for two things: its trade and its hydraulic engineering systems. It was locally autonomous until the reign of Trajan, but it flourished under Roman rule. The town grew up around its Colonnaded Street in the first century CE (AD) and by the mid-first century had witnessed rapid urbanization. Following the flow of the Wadi Musa, the city-center was laid out on either sides of the Colonnaded Street on an elongated plan between the theater in the east and the Qasr al-Bint in the west. The quarries were probably opened in this period, and there followed virtually continuous building through the first and second centuries CE.



The Treasury

According to tradition, in ca. 1200 BCE, the Petra area (but not necessarily the site itself) was populated by Edomites and the area was known as Edom ("red"). Before the Israelite incursions, the Edomites controlled the trade routes from Arabia in the south to Damascus in the north. Little is known about the Edomites at Petra itself, but as a people they were known for their wisdom, their writing, their textile industry, the excellence and fineness of their ceramics, and their skilled metal working.



The next chapter of history belongs to the Persian period, and it is posited that during this time the Nabataeans migrated into Edom, forcing the Edomites to move into southern Palestine. But little is known about Petra proper until about 312 BC by which time the Nabataeans, one of many Arab tribes, occupied it and made it the capital of their kingdom. At this time, during the Hellenistic rule of the Seleucids, and later, the Ptolemies, the whole area flourished with increased trade and the establishment of new towns such as Philadelphia (Rabbath 'Ammon, modern Amman) and Gerasa (modern Jerash). Infighting between the Seleucids and Ptolemies allowed the Nabataeans to gain control over the caravan routes between Arabia and Syria. Although there were struggles between the Jewish Maccabeans and the Seleucid overlords, Nabataean trade continued.



The Temple of Winged Lions

With Nabataean rule, Petra became the center for a spice trade that extended from Arabia to Aqaba and Petra, and onward either to Gaza in the northwest, or to the north through Amman to Bostra, Damascus, and finally on to Palmyra and the Syrian Desert. Nabataean Classical monuments reflect the international character of the Nabataean economy through their combination of native tradition and the classical spirit.



But among the most remarkable of all Nabataean achievements is the hydraulic engineering systems they developed including water conservation systems and the dams that were constructed to divert the rush of swollen winter waters that create flash floods.



In 64-63 BCE, the Nabataeans were conquered by the Roman general, Pompey, whose policy was to restore the cities taken by the Jews. However, he retained an independent Nabataea, although the area was taxed by the Romans and served as a buffer territory against the desert tribes. Completely subsumed by the Romans under the Emperor Trajan in 106 CE, Petra and Nabataea then became part of the Roman province known as Arabia Petraea with its capital at Petra. In 131 CE Hadrian, the Roman emperor, visited the site and named it after himself, Hadriane Petra. The city continued to flourish during the Roman period, with a Triumphal Arch spanning the Siq, and tomb structures either carved out of the living rock or built free-standing. Under Roman rule, Roman Classical monuments abounded — many with Nabataean overtones.



The Colonnaded Street

By 313 CE (AD), Christianity had become a state-recognized religion. In 330 CE, the Emperor Constantine established the Eastern Roman Empire with its capital at Constantinople. Although the 363 earthquake destroyed half of the city, it appears that Petra retained its urban vitality into late antiquity, when it was the seat of a Byzantine bishopric. The newly excavated Petra church with its papyrus scrolls document this period, especially in the sixth century, a phenomenon less well-attested in other sites so far south of 'Amman. In this period there is also striking archaeological and documentary evidence for accommodation between Christians and the pagan aristocracy. Thereafter one can read the archaeology of a fragmented middle Byzantine community living among and re-using the abandoned limestone and sandstone elements of its classical past. The inhabitants during the Byzantine Period recycled many standing structures and rock-cut monuments, while also constructing their own buildings, including churches — such as the recently excavated Petra Church with the extraordinary mosaics. Among the rock-cut monuments they reused is the great tomb or the Ad-Dayr (known also as 'The Monastery'), which was modified into a church. With a change in trade routes, Petra's commercial decline was inevitable. An even more devastating earthquake had a severe impact on the city in 551 CE, and all but brought the city to ruin. With the rise of Islam, Petra became a backwater community. Petra was revealed to the western world in 1812 for the first time since the Crusades when it was re-discovered by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt.



Past Excavations

As one of the most spectacular sites in the Middle East, Petra has long attracted travelers and explorers. During the 19th century, the site was visited and documented by several Europeans, after J. L. Burckhardt’s initial visit. A synthesis of the site was published by Libbey and Hoskins in 1905, presenting one of the first overviews in print. Archaeological excavations began in earnest at the turn of the century, with the earliest scientific expedition being published in Arabia Petraea in 1907, by A. Musil. In the 1920's R. E. Brünnow and A. von Domaszewski surveyed the site and published an ambitious mapping project in their Die Provincia Arabia. This survey has since undergone many necessary revisions, the most recent of which was published by Judith McKenzie in 1990.



An early photograph of

the Treasury

Modern excavations continue to increase our understanding of the site and correct the work of earlier scholars. In 1958, P. J. Parr and C. M. Bennett of the British School of Archaeology began an excavation of the city center which remains the most informative and scientific to date. Recently, the Petra/Jerash Project, undertaken by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, the University of Jordan, the University of Utah, and Swiss archaeologists, have excavated a number of monuments at these two sites. Architectural remains now visible at Petra indicate a thriving city, however, despite almost 100 years of excavation, only one-percent of the city been investigated.



The Great Temple was first explored by Brünnow and von Domaszewski, but it was Bachmann, in his revision of the Petra city plan, who postulated the existence of a “Great Temple,” aligned with the Colonnade Street, lying on the hillside to the south. He speculated that the temple was approached through a monumental Propylaeum with a grand staircase leading into a colonnaded, terraced Lower Temenos, or sacred precinct. Another broad monumental stairway led to a second, Upper Temenos. At its center was the temple, with yet another flight of stairs leading into the temple proper. While no standing structures were revealed before these excavations, the site is littered with architectural fragments, including column drums, probably toppled by one of the earthquakes which rocked the site. Given the promise of the Great Temple precinct and its importance in understanding Petra’s architectural and intercultural history, it is remarkable that it remained unexcavated until 1993 when the Brown University investigations began.



The Great Temple Tour

Please click on the Image Map to the left to visit parts of the temple, or you may click on the listed components of the precint below:



The Propylaeum

The Lower Temenos

The East Colonnade

The East Exedra

The West Colonnade

The West Exedra

The Upper Temenos

The Great Temple

The Theatron



The Great Temple contains eclectic exquisite art and architecture from the Nabataean period and demonstrates that the values of the Nabataeans of Petra during this period who felt that aesthetic decoration of structures with frescos and architectural sculpture was sufficiently significant on which to expend time, money and energy. This blending of different cultures is seen in this palatial building and its precinct with the use of elephant heads, frescos, elegantly carved pilasters and capitals. There is a high level of skill and technology possessed by her builders as well as the high level of organized government that would be needed to plan the building of this monumental structure. The Great Temple is one of the key sites in the Nabataean Petra, and it is a significant site for our knowledge of the development of Petra. The lives of the Nabataeans were influenced by a unique blend of cultures. The study of the Great Temple is essential to the understanding of many different aspects of the archaeology of Petra. Such an interpretation when considered in relation to what is known about other Nabataean sites can effectively enrich the web of knowledge we possess regarding both Petra and the people whose lives ultimately created it. Each of our seasons of excavation has proved to be provocative and propitious as many questions were raised and many extraordinary artifacts were recovered.



The Great Temple represents one of the major archaeological and architectural components of central Petra. Located to the south of the Colonnaded Street and southeast of the Temenos Gate, this 75602 m precinct is comprised of a Propylaeum (monumental entryway), a Lower Temenos, and monumental east and west Stairways which in turn lead to the Upper Temenos — the sacred enclosure for the Temple proper.



The Petra Great Temple was first explored by R. E. Brünnow and A. von Domaszewski in the 1890s; but it was W. Bachmann, in his 1921 revision of the Petra city plan, who postulated the existence of a "Great Temple." No structures were evident before the Brown University 1993 excavations under the direction of Martha Sharp Joukowsky, and the precinct which is constructed on an artificial terrace was littered with carved architectural fragments toppled by one of the earthquakes which rocked the site.



In the Lower Temenos are triple colonnades on the east and west with a total of 96 to 120 columns! These lead into east and west semi-circular buttressed Exedrae. Here in the Lower Temenos, large, white hexagonal pavers were positioned above an extensive subterranean canalization system which has been traced from the Temple Forecourt under the Lower Temenos, the

Aerial photograph of the Great Temple, looking South Looking south from the Lower Temenos at the temple

Propylaeum, and the Colonnaded Street to the Wadi Musa. Discovered near the West Exedra was a capital decorated with Asian elephant-heads; in addition to the thousands of architectural fragments, there are coins, limestone facial frieze elements, lamps, Roman glass, and ceramics which include figurines, Nabataean bowls, small cups, and juglets. Elaborate floral friezes and acanthus-laden limestone capitals suggest the temple was constructed in the beginning of the last quarter of the first century BCE by the Nabataeans who combined their native traditions with the classical spirit. The structure was enlarged later in the Nabataean period in the first century CE. The Great Temple was in use until some point in the fifth century CE, the Byzantine period.



The Great Temple had its columns and walls red-and-white-stuccoed which must have had a dramatic impact when set against its rose-red environment. It is tetrastyle in antis (four columns at the front) with widely-spaced (ca. seven meters, 21 ft.) central columns at the entrance, and two end columns located about five meters (15 ft.) to the east and west, respectively. Approximately 15 meters (45 ft.) in height, the porch columns plus the triangular pediment and the entablature, hypothetically place its height to a minimum of 19 meters (57 ft.).



Looking south from the Lower Temenos at the Temple.

The Great Temple measures 35 meters (105 ft.) east-west, and is some 42.5 meters (127.5 ft.) in length making it the largest freestanding structure in Petra.The podium rests on a forecourt of hexagonal pavers; a stairway approaches a broad deep pronaos (entry), which in turn leads into side corridors that access a 550-630 seat bouleuterion (council chamber), theatron/ odeum discovered in 1997. The Pronaos entry is marked by two columns which are the same diameter (1.50 meters, 4.5 ft.) as those at the temple entrance, but are larger than either the eight flanking the cella walls or the six at the temple rear which have diameters of 1.20 meters (3.6 ft.). In the interior north are massive anta walls resting on a finely carved attic bases. To the south is a two-or-three-storied complex dominated by a large, central vaulted arch and twin stepped arched passages leading to paved platforms, plus a series of steps which accessed the rear of the



bouleuterion, plus a series of steps which access the temple corridors and exit. There are exterior paved walkways on the temple east and west, where sculpted facial fragments and fine.



The Propylaeum

The Propylaeum is the monumental entrance gateway to the temple precinct. It consists of a flight of steps leading into the hexagonally-paved Lower Temenos.



Although the Propylaeum Steps have been surveyed, their dates and construction have not been securely phased. The Temple Complex underwent dramatic spatial changes during its life span, and these are also reflected in the Propylaeum Steps. Their present appearance is not to be confused with the original access to the precinct, for they post-date the erection of the east-west retaining wall facing the Colonnaded Street. Subsequently modified after the street was paved in ca. 76 CE, their present orientation reflects their re-building at the same time or slightly later than the Street. At that time, they served as the entrance from the street into Temple Precinct. The location of the earliest Propylaeum entrance is problematic; specific dates for the construction of these steps is unclear. Further archaeological investigations will be designed to locate structural evidence in this area.



The Propylaeum Steps are in a state of disarray, however, the lower eight steps that face the Colonnaded Street seem to stand largely as they were in antiquity. The upper steps are largely eroded.



The Propylaeum steps (looking south).



To the west of the Propylaea Steps, an arched walkway or corridor, was found in 1998, which was constructed parallel to the Colonnaded Street, was excavated by Katrina Haile in Trench 51 to a 3.50 m depth. Between the upper and lower east-west retaining walls, this corridor was constructed earlier than the present day steps leading from the Colonnaded Street into the Temple precinct. The excavators noted that the Propylaea Steps wall was constructed with a number of voussoirs (arch ashlars), and that the upper east-west retaining wall was an original terrace wall of the precinct. The lower retaining wall, however, was probably contemporary to the building of the steps and the Colonnaded Street. These observations will have to be confirmed by future excavation.


The Propylaeum, the Colonnaded Street at bottom, the Lower Temenos at top.


Large amounts of roof tiles suggest that this area was originally covered. Tesserae were found as well as decorative plaster and coins. Architectural fragments numbered 75, and of these six elephant sculptural elements were recovered, which suggests that the elephant capitals associated with the Lower Temenos colonnades also may have been part of the Propylaeum architectural program.

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WADI RUM… where you will find adventure

WADI RUM… where you will find adventure

Feet the romance of the Arabian desert in the spring-time…or anytime, at Wdi Rum in Jordan. Let the fabled T.E. Lawrene come alive, whether through memories stirred from the screen version or from the pages of history and the actual exploits of the legendary British officer.
Wadi Rum is like a moon-scape of ancient valleys and towering weathered sandstone mountains rising out of the white and pink colored sands. Much of David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” was filmed there and it was also the location where T.E. Lawrence himself was based during the Arab Revolt.



The powerful fan blows a gale of air and the bright nylon begins to billow. Minutes later, propane burners roar out a furnace-blast of heat—enough to warm an entire house in half a minute—and the flaccid, earthbound shape fills out, slowly sheds the shackles of gravity, and pulls itself upright, pointing skyward with increasing eagerness. Soon after, the teardrop of colored nylon, harnessed to a wicker basket, soars silently upward, propelled by a silent principle of physics and carried on the whims of the winds.


Hot-air ballooning, now an international sport, has found a dramatic site for meets in the Middle East: Jordan's ruggedly beautiful Wadi Rum. Floating dots of color set against rugged red hills and an azure sky, some 50 "Montgolfieres," as they were originally called, from 15 nations recently filled the horizon over that breathtaking landscape.
Ballooning has been around for 209 years, and now commands growing popularity both as a sport and as a marketing tool in Europe and the United States. It is not a sport for shallow pockets, however: A good-sized craft with elaborate markings will cost upward of $75,000. Thus many balloons carry advertising for sponsors ranging from car makers to—appropriately—propane gas bottlers; others are owned by corporations and flown by the companies' enthusiastic executives. Virgin Atlantic Airlines' Richard Branson had three 747-shaped balloons entered in the competition at Wadi Rum, and Malcolm Forbes flew a bright yellow Sphinx in Egypt almost 10 years ago (See Aramco World, July-August 1984).
Other balloons at Wadi Rum had the shapes of castles, rolled-up newspapers and Smurf heads as well as the traditional teardrop: Whimsy—or advertisement—has free rein in that regard, since odd shapes are not a disadvantage in balloon racing. Once airborne, the balloons fly with, not through, the wind. Nonetheless, a good balloonist knows how to utilize the varying air temperatures and currents at different altitudes to direct his balloon to the desired target.
The meet in Wadi Rum consisted of three stages, one flown each day. Each stage was a different sort of race, testing differing elements of a balloonist's abilities. Competing were some of the best balloon pilots in the world, who reveled in the rugged beauty of the wadi even while they dealt with the challenges of navigation through its rocky crags and swirling winds. "There is no other place on earth to fly like this" .



Valley Of The Moon

There are places on earth so weird yet so beautiful, so forbidding yet so irresistible that in his efforts to describe them man runs out of commonplace similes, gives up on his earthbound metaphors and turns instead to the unknown. Such a place is Wadi Ram, a great valley in southern Jordan, a vast silent place, so wild, so strange that it came, eventually, to be called the "Valley of the Moon."
The Wadi Ram is actually a great fracture in the surface of the earth, the result, probably, of some titanic upheaval that cracked great slabs of granite and sandstone like so many shards of pottery and heaved them upward in the form of great cliffs. It runs northeast to southeast in what is roughly a direct line between the lower end of the Dead Sea and the upper end of the Gulf of Aqaba.
It is only 35 miles from Aqaba to Wadi Ram and much of the distance can be covered swiftly on the smooth pavement of the Desert Highway that links Aqaba, Jordan's sole seaport, to Amman, Jordan's capital. About halfway between two villages called Kweira and Khirbet al-Khalidi, a dirt track strikes off across the desert. This is the road along which, it is thought, Colonel T.E. Lawrence led his raiders in World War I and along which, 40 years later, an American film company made its way to recreate the life of that colorful man amid the actual desert in which he rode and fought. For those who take that track it seems as if they have suddenly entered another world. As in many areas on the Arabian Peninsula, the traces of the unknown forces that battered the earth back in the dim past are still plain and inevitably they evoke the imagined emptiness of lunar plains and mountains, and the dry cracked beds of ancient seas.
Most mountains from a distance are shapeless, drab and identical. Not those at Wadi Ram. There, drenched in pale purple, they rear up off the valley floor, instantly and vividly alive. As distance lessens, the purple gives way to the tawny hues of sandstone ridges that tower a thousand sheer feet in the air and are topped with dome's worn smooth by a constant wind. The skies are pale and colorless and the sand underfoot and the fragments of rock at the base of the cliffs are dry and crisp with age. All around is emptiness and silence, the silence, it seems, of a land that man has not yet set foot upon or, having done so, has trod with quiet caution. The sound of a Land-Rover is suddenly loud and the size of it presumptuous amid spaces so immense they dwarf man and vehicle into insignificance.
To penetrate to the heart of Wadi Ram takes but an hour. Yet it is so far in time from the Desert Highway that the sight of a small settlement is startling. It is a cluster of tiny buildings standing in the center of a vast plain that lies between Jabal Ram on one side and Jabal Um Ishrin two thirds of a mile away on the other. Both are great segments of the high cliffs that Lawrence described as "crags like gigantic buildings along two sides of their street." There is a fortress there manned by a sergeant and five patrolmen of the Jordan Desert Police. There are a school and two small shops to serve a small settlement of Bedouins who, more or less regularly, set up their black tents nearby. The Bedouins camp there for the same reason that dictates the location of all their encampments—water. Up and down the wadi in the shadows of the great escarpments are small springs without which the valley—with summer temperatures of up to 140° F and no more than four inches of rain a year—would be uninhabitable.
The policemen, in the tradition of the Bedouins, which most of them used to be, are friendly and hospitable to all travelers. Each of them is assigned to the small outpost for a minimum of a year and although each man has a short leave every two weeks, life tends, eventually, to develop into a pattern of repetition and monotony that is broken only by the biweekly truck roaring into the stillness to bring supplies and pick up a man due for leave, or the approach of the rare visitor who has come to see the Wadi Ram. Thus they welcome company, offer coffee, answer questions willingly and, obviously aware of their splendidly romantic uniforms and their dashing headcloths, pose with enthusiasm against a spectacular backdrop.
One cannot go far in Jordan without coming across antiquities, and Wadi Ram is no exception. Half a mile from the police post, on a small hill, are the remains of a small temple, probably Nabatean and probably built in the first century. Excavations on the site started in the late fifties, but came to a halt when other projects were given precedence. There are also slabs of rock throughout the valley with inscriptions in early Thamudic writing, mostly the names of travelers of long ago, who were apparently moved by what Lawrence called "this processional way greater than imagination," and who vowed to leave some mark of their passing before they dwindled away and vanished in the vastness of time and distance.

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Thomas Alva Edison

In his lifetime, Thomas Alva Edison profoundly affected the technology of modern society. The American inventor was born February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Edison, Jr. and Nancy Elliot Edison. When Edison was 7 years old, his family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, after his father hired on as a carpenter at the Fort Gratiot military post.

Edison entered school in Port Huron, but his teachers considered him to be a dull student. Because of hearing problems, Edison had difficulty following the lessons and his school attendance became sporadic. Nevertheless, Edison became a voracious reader and at age 10, he set up a laboratory in his basement.

When his mother could not longer stand the smell of his chemistry lab, Edison took a job as a trainboy on the Grand Trunk Railway and established a new lab in an empty freight car. He was 12 at the time. Edison also began printing a weekly newspaper, which he called the Grand Trunk Herald.

While Edison was working for the railroad, something happened that changed the course of his career. Edison saved the life of a station official's child, who had fallen onto the tracks of an oncoming train. For his bravery, the boy's father taught Edison how to use the telegraph.

From 1862 to 1868, Edison worked as a roving telegrapher in the Midwest, the South, Canada, and New England. During this time, he began developing a telegraphic repeating instrument that made it possible to transmit messages automatically. By 1869, Edison's inventions, including the duplex telegraph and message printer, were progressing so well, he left telegraphy and began a career of full-time inventing and entrepreneurship.

Edison moved to New York City and within a year, he was able to open a workshop in Newark, New Jersey. He produced the Edison Universal Stock Printer, the automatic telegraph, the quadruplex, as well as other printing telegraphs, while working out of Newark. During this same period, Edison married Mary Stilwell.

Edison was a poor financial manager and by 1875, he began to experience financial difficulties. To reduce costs, Edison asked his widowed father to help him build a new laboratory and machine shop in Menlo Park, New Jersey. He moved into the new building in March, 1876 along with two associates, Charles Batchelor and John Kruesi. Edison achieved his greatest successes in this laboratory and he was dubbed the "Wizard of Menlo Park."

In 1877, Edison invented the carbon-button transmitter that is still used in telephone speakers and microphones. In December of the same year, he unveiled the tinfoil phonograph. (It was 10 years before the phonograph was available as a commercial product). In the late 1870s, backed by leading financiers including J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilts, Edison established the Edison Electric Light Company. In 1879, he publicly demonstrated his incandescent electric light bulb. In 1882, he supervised the installation of the first commercial, central power system in lower Manhattan. In 1883, one of Edison's engineers William J. Hammer, made a discovery which later led to the electron tube. The discovery was patented the "Edison effect."

In 1884, Edison's wife Mary died, leaving him with three young children. He married Mina Miller in 1886, and began construction on a new laboratory and research facility in West Orange, New Jersey. The new lab employed approximately 60 workers and Edison attempted to personally manage this large staff. The story goes that when a new employee once asked about rules, Edison answered, "There ain't no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish something." However, the operation in West Orange lacked the intimacy of Menlo Park, and Edison's time was often consumed by administrative chores.

During his time in West Orange, Edison produced the commercial phonograph, the Kinetoscope, the Edison storage battery, the electric pen, the mimeograph, and the microtasimeter. In 1913, Edison introduced the first talking moving pictures. In 1915, he was appointed president of the U.S. Navy Consulting Board. In all, Edison patented more than 1,000 discoveries. Edison's inventions were often in response to demand for new or improved products. However, others also came about accidentally or serendipitously.

Thomas Alva Edison died in West Orange, New Jersey on October 18,1931. At the time of this death, he was experimenting on rubber from goldenrod. After his death, Edison became a folk hero of legendary status. His inventions had truly and profoundly affected the shaping of modern society.

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