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Petra:
Sacred City of Temples and Tombs
By
Daniel C. Peterson and William J. Hamblin
One
of the great archaeological and architectural gems of the world,
Petra is located about 180 miles south of Amman in Jordan. For centuries, Petra was a romantic
“lost” city, visited only by hardy adventurers like Jacob Burckhardt;
today it is visited by tens of thousands from around the world.
Nestled in a desert valley accessible only through narrow canyons,
Petra uniquely combines the natural beauty of Canyonlands National Park with spectacular two thousand year old rock-cut tombs
and temples. For historians of religion, Petra provides an important
example of ancient Near Eastern concepts of sacred space.
click to enlarge
Petra was the capital
of the Nabateans, a pre-Islamic Arab tribe that inhabited
the area of modern Jordan and southern Israel in the three centuries before and after Christ. By
the first century BC, the Nabatean Arabs had grown fantastically
wealthy as middlemen transporting valuable Arabian spices
and incense to the Romans. In 106 AD, the Romans annexed
Petra and usurped control of the trade routes, leading
to the decline of Petra and the Nabateans. During the
two centuries before the Roman conquest, however, the
Nabateans built dozens of magnificent rock-cut tombs
for their kings, priests, and aristocrats, and temples
for their gods in a mixture of Greek, Roman, and indigenous
Nabatean architectural styles. Unfortunately, only
a few Nabatean inscriptions have survived; we are forced
to piece together an understanding of their beliefs
from isolated comments by non-Nabateans.
Few
houses or commercial buildings have been found at Petra,
which leads many to believe that the place was primarily
a sacred city of temples and tombs. The principal god
of the Nabateans was the sun-god Dushara, meaning “he
[the god] of [the mountain] Shara,” which is equated
with mount Seir of the Bible (Genesis 14:6). Dushara was represented
only by uncarved stone pillars; the Nabateans apparently
had a taboo against “graven images” of their god similar
to that of the Israelites. Dushara’s consort was the
moon-goddess Allat, the Great Mother, who was widely
worshiped by pre-Islamic Arabs but rejected and condemned
during Muhammad’s monotheistic reforms of the early
seventh century AD.
The
sacred monuments of Petra include both
temples and tombs, although the two categories often
overlap. The most famous tomb of Petra is the magnificent
Khazneh (“treasury”), universally recognizable as the
shrine of the Holy Grail from the Indiana Jones movie.
Its facade, twelve stories high and chiseled out of
a reddish sandstone cliff, is the most elegant in Petra,
carved in imitation of a temple gateway and adorned
with now badly worn sculpture.
The
largest tomb is known as the “Deir,” or “monastery,”
recalling its use by Christian monks from the fifth
through the thirteenth centuries AD. Originally, however,
it was the imposing tomb of the deified Nabatean king
Aboud I. A massive rock-cut monument some fourteen
stories high, the tomb is carved into the pyramid shaped
peak of the mountains surrounding Petra. It is accessible
only by ascending a sacred way from the valley of Petra
to the top of the mountains, climbing hundreds of ancient
rock-cut stairs in symbolic imitation of the celestial
ascent of the soul to the realm of the gods dwelling
on top of their sacred mountain. The facade of the tomb
also looks like the gateway of a temple, with massive
columns, huge niches for now-lost statues, and a forty-foot
high doorway. The interior is bare today, but it once
held statues and the sarcophagus of the god-king Aboud.
The walls are surrounded by low seats that were used
by his descendants and worshipers for sacrificial banquets
in honor of their deified ancestor.
Petra also includes
a fascinating open-air sanctuary or “high place” at
the top of another mountain peak. Here, the top of
the mountain was chiseled away and flattened to form
a broad sacrificial platform and altar, with a large
twenty foot high obelisk representing Dushara.
More
traditional temples are found in the valley along the
central road of Petra, sometimes called a sacred way.
The best preserved of these is known among the bedouins
as the Qasr Bint Fara’un (“Palace of the Pharaoh’s daughter”),
but it was actually another temple to Dushara. This
temple has a three-part structure with an inner Holy
of Holies typical of Semitic temples, including Solomon’s.
The courtyard before the temple contains a large, well
preserved altar and ramp, which also roughly parallels
the altar of the ancient Israelite temple.
Jane Taylor, Petra
and the Lost Kingdom of the Nabataeans (Harvard, 2002)
Maria Guzzo,
Petra (2002)
http://www.pbase.com/mansour_mouasher/petra
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