Petra

The highlight of Jordan was a day at Petra, in the southern Shara Mountains. First inhabited nine thousand years ago, legend has it it was in these hills that God ordered Moses to strike the rock and bring forth water for the Israelites on their 40 year journey through the wilderness. The Nabataeans would settle here in the 7th century BCE, taking advantage of the deep canyon’s caravan route to gain great riches on this axis point between Egypt, Arabia, and Syria. As many as 30,000 people lived here at its height, literally carving their homes and temples into the rose red cliffs and adorning them with elaborate, detailed, sharply defined facades of enormous proportions.

By the 1st century of this Common Era, sea transportation eclipsed camel caravans, Nabataean society declined and Rome moved in. Emperor Hadrian visited in 130 CE. As Roman patronage declined, Byzantine Christians moved in, converting temples to churches. Economic, political, and cultural shifts, along with two major earthquakes, left Petra more or less deserted by the 7th or 8th centuries.

Deserted and forgotten by everyone but the Bedouin nomads, until Swiss explorer Jean Louis Burckhardt, in Arab disguise, was led to it in 1812.

It is estimated that barely 1% of Petra has been uncovered. That 1% offers more spectacle than you can imagine. The three-kilometre hike through the Bab as-Siq (canyon) is breathtaking. Split open by an earthquake, the cliffs curve and turn upward, leaving only a crack open to the sky. The sandstone is mottled with varied shades of red and rose and yellow, glowing in the sunlight.

Suddenly you step out of the siq and before you is the 30 by 40 metre façade of the Treasury. This was once a High Place of Sacrifice, evidenced by the recessed basins for washing and the channels for carrying away blood. (Inside the Treasury.)

(Looking back towards the Siq through which we have come.)

The Outer Siq opens to reveal homes and tombs carved into the cliff face and a three thousand seat amphitheatre carved into the rock. The Romans built amphitheatres. The Nabataeans carved this one into the rock.

Beyond here a 220 metre, 750-step winding ascent up the cliff suddenly opens to the Monastery with its 50 metre square façade. Its doorway alone is taller than a house. It likely dates to the 1st century and was certainly not a monastery in its day. Whatever it was it is impressive!

Five of the seven of us with whom I was traveling made the climb to the Monastery, taking an hour in the mid-day heat. After arriving, we recovered with a cup of tea and relaxed in a cool cave café with a view, like none other!

We all needed time to absorb what we were seeing so agreed to meet up down at the car park a few hours later. I hiked on, behind the ridge overlooking the Monastery, finding myself suddenly at the edge of the world – the earth just dropped off! Looking for a better photo vantage point I crawled out onto a ledge and suddenly found myself totally alone and perched high above the Wadi Araba.

I sat for more than an hour transfixed by the view across the craggy, desolate mountains, watching the eagles soaring effortlessly and the changing angle of the sun coaxing colours out of the hills. The whole idea of earthquakes ripping open these fathomless caverns inside of seconds and of mountain streams carving them in the course of centuries left me dizzy. I realized just how finite I am, and the moments that seem so monumental to me. Yet, strangely, I had a sense that we are no less a part of the vital "Being" that is God than all this laid out before me.

Maybe you had to be there, but it was definitely a moment . . .