Petra: Ancient City of Stone
Photographs by Annie Griffiths Belt
Text by Don Belt
To the camel driver of two millennia ago, this city, Petra, beckoned like a distant star. For the thirsty there was water, flowing down sinuous stone channels; for the devout there were carve altars to Dushara; those seeking hospitality were greeted by the smell of cardamom, campfires and searing meat.
Two thousand years have passed, but shades of ancient Petra still endure in the desert of southern Jordan. The facades of its buildings peer out from banks of drifted sand, and you can wander freely among them, fingertips on chiseled rock. Delicate bits of Nabataen pottery lie scattered across the land like eggshells, so numerous at times that it’s hard to avoid stepping on them. And if you are out early—before the first tourist us pulls up just past daybreak—you might even hear echoes of the ancient city, in the local Bedouin drifting by on camels in the mist or in the murmur of voices over pots of steeping tea.
Petra was founded by the Nabataeans, a nomadic tribe that left little behind to explain themselves. Its surpassing charm and its most profound dilemma both stem from the immediacy of its past. A living antiquity presents problems to those who would preserve the past, or uncover its secrets, or package it for mass consumption.
Beautiful and unique, Petra is also "an exceptionally fragile site."
NGM 1998/12