The most fascinating thing about archaeological ruins is that, no matter how much experts study them, they will always keep mysteries that are impossible to decipher. For example, we will never know if the Hellenistic-influenced stonemasons who carved the façade of the Treasury of Petra, one of the most beautiful (but neither the only nor the largest) in the Nabataean city, sculpted it in that place because it was the only space which was free at the time. Or if it was intentionally placed there, just outside the Siq gorge, so that all succeeding generations of tourists—those travelers from the future who would value visual knockouts so highly—would suffer from Stendhal syndrome after walking the 1, 5 kilometers from that narrow gorge and they suddenly come across the magnificence of this 40-meter-high façade full of columns, pediments and false gazebos, so in classic taste.
Petra is one of those places that, despite many things you have been told, never disappoints you. A traveling mecca. The place that alone justifies a trip to Jordan. With the added luck of having such cinematographic access. A staging that, casual or sought after, dismantles the emotional shell of the most chump of tourists.
The Nabataeans built their capital in a narrow valley between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba, a strategic location on all trade routes between Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and the Mediterranean ports. The valley had only two entrances: a very steep path between dry mountains to the northwest and a very narrow and deep canyon to the east, the Siq, very easy to defend and through which caravans loaded with incense and other valuable products entered that made the town rich. the city. That is the same famous stone gorge that visitors use today to access the stone city, while we are ruminating all the wonders read previously about Petra. When suddenly the gorge opens up and you find yourself face to face with that temple, you tearfully accept that everything you had been told about that magical moment fell short.
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Actually, the Treasury facade is neither a temple nor a palace. It is a hemispeos, a tomb with a façade finely carved into the rock that does not continue inside the burial rooms. It could have been the mausoleum of the Nabataean king Aretas III (85 BC – 62 BC). And it is called the treasure because the Bedouins believed that the Nabataeans had hidden one in the tholos, the piece in the shape of a giant urn that crowns the central gazebo on the second level. That is why they shot it, like a piñata, to see if the jewels and coins that they supposed were inside it would fall (the impacts are still visible on the stone).
I can imagine the impression it must have made on Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, the Swiss archaeologist who, disguised as an Arab and taking advantage of his knowledge of that language and culture, posed as just another merchant and in 1812 became the first Westerner to visit the ancient den of the Nabateans. Burckhardt was an unusual and rigorous explorer. Very far from those adventurers, mostly military or ex-military, who a few decades later would break into the heart of Africa in search of the sources of the Nile with more desire for personal glory than contribution to science. He spent years preparing to travel the Middle East. He learned Arabic (among other languages), studied its laws and culture, knew the Qur’an fluently, flogged himself through hunger and thirst in arid areas to learn to move through the desert and blended into that region of the world as one more. Even at the end of his life he converted to Islam. And he did not reveal the location of his discovery in life. He limited himself to periodically sending his notes and diaries to the University of Cambridge, where they remained in custody. It was five years after his death, which occurred in October 1817, when his writings on that journey were published, Tours in Syria and the Holy Land. The book revealed to the world the exact location of Petra and its treasures and opened the doors to a frenzy among Western travelers that continues to this day.
A final piece of advice: if you go to Petra, don’t get caught up in the typical offer of the organized package, which consists of a quick visit in the morning through the main valley, lunch at the buffet at the end of the route… and another thing, butterfly . Petra requires at least two days: one for the Siq, the Treasury, the Royal tombs, the Greek theater and the final one at the monastery façade; and another to go up to the Altar of Sacrifices and then go down the side valley, the Wadi Farasa (the valley of the butterflies), to admire another large number of tombs and constructions that the tourist prisillas will never see
Fourth installment of this summer series in which I remember places whose beauty gave me Stendhal syndrome, a disease of Romanticism that is also widely diagnosed in modern tourists. Today we are going to Jordan.
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