5/21 – 5/22/15. Wadi Musa, Jordan

Now I have seen Petra. It is not every day that one gets to live out a childhood dream, and I am pleased to report that reality, for once, did not disappoint. I wanted to be at the gate yesterday by 6, the opening time; but my hotel breakfast did not begin until 6:30, and no amount of wish-fulfillment could outweigh the prospect of an omelet bar. It was nearly 7 by the time I passed the gate, and began the long stony walk to the Siq. A few tombs – one featuring an extravagant façade topped by four obelisks – reared from sandstone outcroppings along the trail, but I had eyes only for the ruddy cliffs ahead. As I drew closer, a line in the cliffs resolved into the entrance of a narrow gorge. This was the famous Siq, the kilometer-long defile, never more than three or four meters wide, that winds into the heart of the mountain. Steps echoing along the sculpted sandstone walls, I walked for nearly twenty minutes in half-light. And suddenly, I stood before the so-called Treasury, perhaps the most photographed monument in Jordan. Ignoring a small knot of camel drivers and souvenir sellers already staging for the mid-morning crowds, I stood alone in the sandy hollow before that beautifully balanced façade for a long moment. Then I turned down the broadening canyon, and the marvel of Petra unfolded before me: tombs piled and serried on tombs, a vast necropolis dominating and embracing a vanished city.

The Treasury

Most of the buildings in which the citizens of Petra lived and worked have vanished beneath the sands of the wadi, leaving only the rock-cut sepulchers in which they were buried. Besides the city’s spectacular theater, carved from glowing sandstone, the so-called street of facades consisted solely of tombs, cut into every available rock face. The facades exhibited remarkable variety, a reflection of the Nabatean habit of borrowing styles and motifs from all of their neighbors. Thus, while many employed “crow-steps” ultimately modelled on Assyrian ziggurats, others – like the Treasury – were purely Classical, sporting Corinthian columns, broken pediments, and sculpted entablature. The resultant architectural gallery, arrayed on both sides of the wadi, provides fascinating insight into the imagination of a society poised between the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Leaving the main track, I walked up a side path to the so-called Royal tombs, four immense facades that originally dominated the city center. One, the “Silk Tomb,” was carved into sandstone of beautifully modulated color; another, the “Palace,” was originally more than sixty feet high by more than a hundred broad, and may have been modeled on contemporary royal residences in Alexandria and Antioch. Marveling at the scale of these facades, and struck still more by their color as they were kindled by the morning sun, I wandered for nearly an hour among the royal tombs, finally turning in the direction of the city center as the sun crested the cliff and began to ruin my pictures.

The Royal Tombs
The “Silk Tomb”

 

The “Palace”

Relatively little remains of Petra’s center. Before it was levelled by earthquakes and buried by waterborne debris, the main street probably looked much like those of Gerasa and Gadara – a colonnaded thoroughfare bounded by monumental buildings. The city’s Nabatean heritage, however, introduced unique features into the standard plan, most notably two temples decorated in the elaborate local style. Although the “Great Temple” still stood to its impressive full height, most of the buildings in the city center were not well enough preserved to merit extensive investigation. I moved through the buildings, paused briefly in the dated museum, and then began the long and steep hike to the Monastery.

Following the path of winding wadi garnished with flowering oleanders, I trudged uphill for nearly an hour. When I finally emerged before the façade of the Monastery (actually the meeting place of a pagan cult association), I was awestruck by its immense size; the door alone was twenty feet tall.

The Monastery. The two tourists on the right provide a sense of scale.

After hiking for an hour in a few of the more accessible wadis nearby (nearly all of which featured more Nabatean tombs), I descended the path and retraced my steps through the city center to the trailhead for the High Place of Sacrifice.

scenery along the trail

Another steep climb, this time in the malodorous company of a herd of donkeys carrying footsore tourists up the slope, brought me to the High Place of Sacrifice – which, as the name suggests, was an altar carved into the summit of a lofty hill. The Nabateans, like many ancient peoples, associated height with proximity to the abode of the gods; and here, on a pinnacle of blood red stone, they are thought to have sacrificed sheep, goats, and the occasional human. Whatever horrors they may have witnessed in the past, the stone seats before the altar now frame only a stupendous view over the valley of Petra and surrounding mountains.

Plunging into the heart of this view, I followed a deserted wadi around the back of the mountain. I paused for a few minutes on the steps of a funerary temple at the head of the valley. In the temple walls behind and cliffs overhead, sandstone pulsed and whirled with color, its striations ignited by the afternoon sun. The tomb facades along the canyon made full use of the natural palette, their sculpted columns and pediments beautifully complementing the unshaped masses of stone beyond.

I paused again at the end of the canyon, taking a moment to savor the incredible wealth of color: stone red, black, and white, chased with hundreds of tomb facades, glowing in the raking light.

I made the long walk back up a Siq suffused with the soft light of evening. On finally reaching my hotel, I took a dip in the rooftop pool, lifting myself over the lip to watch a second sunset over the mountains. When I heard that a dinner buffet was available, my happiness was complete: seldom on this trip have I ended a day both fully satisfied and satisfactorily full.

5-22

Today, having seen all the major sights of Petra, I decided to explore some of its less-visited corners. My guidebook mentioned an alternate route into the city, “very narrow and only to be attempted by the nimble;” and last night, after a reflective moment spent massaging my bruised right leg, I decided to attempt it. Veering off the main path at the entrance to the Siq, I jumped down into the rock-strewn bed of the Wadi Muthlim, and passed immediately beneath a long tunnel carved by the Nabateans to funnel floodwater away from their city. For the first few hundred meters, the wadi bed was broad and pebbly, straightforward to navigate and easily traversed. On both sides, three- and four hundred foot sandstone cliffs rose toward a cobalt sky, their tops kindled by the morning sun.

As I progressed, however, the cliffs drew closer together. The wadi bed narrowed and the pebbles were replaced by boulders and tree trunks, choking and finally blocking the canyon bed. My guidebook mentioned “two places where a short scramble over boulders may be necessary.” Since that section was written, winter floods seem to have eaten away the sediment around these boulders: it was no longer a question of a four foot climb over rocks, but of jumping into the eight foot holes that had formed beneath them.

These pits negotiated, I discovered that the wadi narrowed still further, until the base was no wider my shoe, and the walls close enough to brush both shoulders. The sandstone of the bed and walls was eroded into weird and beautiful shapes – which I had ample opportunity to appreciate, as my face was literally pressed up against them.

Just as the wadi became almost too narrow to pass, a sharp turn revealed a slightly wider cross canyon. About thirty meters down this defile, I began to see small Nabatean shrines carved into the walls. These grew thicker and more elaborate, until the walls on both sides were covered with stylized doors and dedications.

Having hiked in twilight for more than an hour – the canyon was too narrow to admit the morning sun – I was relieved (and half-blinded) when another turn brought me into full light. I emerged into a broad canyon lined with tomb facades and dotted with grazing goats. Although I did not stop to explore –many of the tombs in this area, more than a mile from the center of the ancient city, are inhabited by local Bedouin –I paused frequently to take pictures of the beautiful (and tourist-free) landscape. Aside from the bleating of a few goats and the protests of a donkey tethered on the other side of the canyon, the only sound was birdsong. This changed abruptly when I crested a hill and found myself close to the main street, where the souvenir sellers were crying their wares to bumbling crowds of tourists.

It was now a little after 10. Deciding that I had time for one more hike, I clambered up several hundred steps to an overlook five hundred feet above the city center. The views were incredible, and the light perfect for a panoramic photos. The trail’s end on a ledge high above the Treasury and Siq was equally photogenic. Returning the way I had come, I paused for a long moment on the overlook of the city center, trying to absorb the marvel of Petra a last time. Then I hurried down the endless steps, and pushed my way through the crowds plodding down the Siq; it was nearly noon, and I had a long way to drive.

 

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