Can someone tell me about the ancient city of Petra?

Question: Can someone tell me about the ancient city of Petra!?
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The ancient Nabataean city of Petra was recently voted as the seventh wonder of the ancient world!. There are over one thousand burial monuments in Petra and several hundred others in the other burial cities!. Most of these were for family and tribal units!. Thus the tombs could have contained tens of thousands of people!. Added to this, there are extensive Nabataean graveyards located near Petra and the other cities where the more common people were buried!. This adds up to a lot of graves!.The Nabataeans wealthy were mostly buried in five Nabataean burial cities!. There were three cities in the Sinai/Negev, one in the inner kingdom (Petra) and one in Saudi Arabia!. These cities are also important cities, in that they were located at the junctions of major trade routes!.

Therefore, it appears that the Nabataean dead were transported to these cities for proper burial!. Most likely there was something in Nabataean culture or religion that encouraged people to think of them spending eternity along side of their family and relatives!.

The Builders of the Tombs
From the inscriptions we see that the tombs were made by Nabataean sculptors and not by imported slaves or laborers!.

A City of Tombs
Was Petra originally a religious city, or was it an urban center for the Nabataeans!. That probably depends on when you are talking about!. It appears that originally it was more like a religious city!. It functioned as the center for the twice-yearly pilgrimages and festivals, and it also functioned as a burial city!. It was complete with several temples, a festival theater, a nymphaeum, a bathhouse, a sacred way, a monumental gate, many pools, and several other public buildings!. The temples and other public buildings occupied the central valley, where the Royal Tombs were situated!.

Along with this, the people who maintained Petra had to live there!. This included priests, sculptors, grave diggers, temple attendants, administrative staff for the many public buildings, merchants who sold temple and burial paraphernalia, and other support people who ran services that provided things like food and water!. If there was a royal court in Petra, then this would have entailed another whole group of people!. These people alone may have numbered several thousand, along with their spouses and families!.

Some writers have estimated that Petra might have had a population of 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants!. Interestingly enough, few academic sources substantiate these figures!. (originally derived by a journalist)!. There was a limited amount of room within Petra's city walls!. If we calculated, say, 10 people to a household, this would come to at least 2000 large houses!. The problem with this is that there was very little room within the city proper for private housing!. The great majority all of the buildings uncovered to date have been public buildings!. As an example, consider the market places!. For years, part of Petra was deemed as having upper, middle, and lower marketplaces!. When archaeologists decided to excavate the lower market in 1998, they discovered a series of public pools, gardens, and waterworks!. Most archeologists, however, now believe that Petra was a large, urban center!. The Petra Scrolls clearly tell us of the crowded living conditions within the city during the Byzantine era, but little is known of Petra during its purely Nabataean days from around 60 BC to 200 AD!.

As the Nabataeans were nomadic people who traditionally lived in tents, it is assumed that for the first several hundred years of their occupation of the Inner Kingdom that they lived in tents, and did not erect stone houses!. This is true in most of the Nabataean cities!. It is only during the latter part of the Nabataean kingdom that suddenly the Nabataeans began constructing houses, and then they were often of incredible size, varying from 600 to 2000 square meters!.

So, did people live in cities surrounded by the dead!? The answer is not clear, but it may have been that most of the Nabataeans lived in tents scattered across the countryside, or in small centers such as Selah!. Many also lived in smaller villages raising camels and horses!. This would have required large tracts of grazing space!. Others would be away with the caravans or trading ships!. So it only makes sense that they would cluster their public buildings around one spot, where the temples and Royal courts and tombs were located!. As for housing, perhaps for many years, and particularly during public festivals, the majority of people lived in tents!.
http://nabataea!.net/petra!.html

Little is known of the early history of the Nabataeans, but they probably started as a wandering Arab tribe that grew rich on the plunder of caravans coming from Arabia; they are sometimes identified with the Nabaioth of the Old Testament, and may perhaps be referred to by Obadiah in his tirade against the Edomites!. The first definite historical mention of them is in 312 B!.C!., when Petra was captured by Antigonus and a great treasure taken away!. At that time it was probably no more than a storage place for their plunder!. They soon found, however, that it paid them better to extract toll from the caravans and guarantee them safe conduct through their land, and gradually!. under a series of able kings, they obtained control of more and more country and consequently more and more caravan routes!. Contact with the outside world showed them the glories of Greek culture, which they eagerly adopted They began to build and settle in Petra, and lavished on it all the wealth they possessed!. A style of architecture of their own was developed, founded on Greek and Assyrian lines, the characteristic feature of which is a kinci of stepped pinnacle!. clearly seen in many of the photographs!. Rock faces were cut and smoothed, great numbers of tombs ( suggesting a cult of the dead ) were carved out of the mountains, and on the very tops of the hills the rock was levelled off and made into the "High Places" where sacrifices were offered up!. Houses also were cut in the rock, sometimes of two or three storeys, connected by rock staircases, and tiers of streets can be distinguished on some cliff faces!.

A highly specialised and distinctive type of pottery was evolved, of astonishing thinness and hardness, decorated with quaint patterns in black!. This pottery can be recognised in whatever part of the country it is found, it is so individual!. A coinage was introduced, and the names of the kings given on the coins clearly show their Arab origin, such as Aretas, the Hellenised form of Harith, a pure Arab name!.

One of the problems which was faced and overcome with great ingenuity was that of the water supply!. The two springs in the city itself soon became insufflcient to supply the constantly increasing demands of the population!. The quantity required rose in proportion to the wealth of the community, from the bare sufficiency to keep body and soul together to the luxury requirements of great public baths, to say nothing of the amount consumed in the mixing of mortar and plaster for building!. From the springs at Wady Musa a channel was cut in the rock to the heart of the city, bringing a continuous supplv of beautiful water, which was, however, liable to be cut off in time of siege!. To overcome this, vast cisterns were cut in the rock and lined with plaster, and channels were cut in every hill- side, which collected the rain- water as it poured over the rock- face, and conducted it to the cisterns!. Everywhere you look you will see these channels, evidence of the care and forethought of the rulers of the city!. This care for water was general all over their domains, and was no doubt largely responsible for their success!. Furthermore, springs seem to have been holy places, for at many of them are found traces of buildings like shrines, with inscriptions and dedications to the goddess Allat, who, perhaps, lived in the springs!.

During the period of the break- up of the Greek Empire and the beginning of the Roman, many countries round about them were plunged into unrest!. The Nabataeans, however, continued their way unchecked, safe in their hid den, secret city!. They took advantage of the weakness of the surrounding states, and in the first century B!.C!., under King Aretas III extended their empire to Damascus!. But the coming of the Roman Empire to the neighbouring countries brought with it a change: as eagerly as they had absorbed the Greek culture so they now took to the Roman, and this change is reectfled chiefly in the style of architecture!. Tomb facades became larger and more imposing, rows of columns were introduced, and the triangular pediment took the place of the stepped pinnacle, which gradually dropped out of use!. They still retained some individuality, seen in the style of some of the capitals to the columns!.

Stories of the great wealth of Petra soon caused the Romans to cast covetous eyes in that direction!. Two or three attempts to capture the city failed completely, though the Nabataeans as a nation were made to pay tribute!. But with all its inaccessibility, it could not hold out against the might of Rome, and in A!.D!. 106 Petra with all its territory became a Roman Province!. The Emperor Trajan built a great road!. which passed through Petra, collnecting Syria with the Red Sea!. Undel Roman rule Petra prospered greatly, and some of the finest monuments date from this period!. The one surviving built structure, the Temple, was erected under Roman supervision!. More and more wealth was lavished on the city, foreign craftsmen were brought in to embellish and beautiful it, and it became one of the wonders of the world!.

This prosperity was, however, short lived, and in the third century A!.D!., a decline set in!. This was chiefly caused by the gradual abandonment of the land route of the Arabian caravans in favour of the easier route by the Red Sea, and by the rise of a rival city, Palmyra, in theWww@QuestionHome@Com

Petra (from π?τρα "petra", rock in Greek; Arabic: ???????, Al-Batrā?) is an archaeological site in Arabah, Aqaba Governorate, Jordan, lying on the slope of Mount Hor in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah (Wadi Araba), the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba!. It is renowned for its rock-cut architecture!. Petra is also one of the new wonders of the world!.
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Archaeology Dictionary: Petra, Jordan

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An ancient city set deep in a valley on the western side of the limestone plateau of Jordan that owed its origins to good supplies of spring water, an important position on trading routes between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea, and the presence of abundant natural caves that could be turned into dwellings and storehouses!. Petra was the name given by Greek and Roman traders; it was known as Rekem or Arkem in Hebrew and Sela by the Crusaders!.

Petra was successively the capital of the Edomite and Nabataeans kingdoms, which established it as a trading centre in the 1st millennium bc!. Roads were built into the valley (the Sik) and the high cliffs on either side were decorated with emblems of the god Durares!. At the head of the Sik in the transverse gorge of Wadi al Jarra is the fa?ade of a massive temple, Khazneh al Faraún, sculptured into the rose-red rock!. Throughout Petra every available rock surface has been worked into a vertical face and in many cases sculptured into the fa?ade of a temple, shrine, palace, or dwelling!. Behind each fa?ade is a large chamber hewn into the rock and entered through a tall rectangular doorway!. In Roman times a large rock-cut amphitheatre with 33 rows of seats was added, as well as a temple known as Kasr al Bint Faraún!. Later on the Crusaders fortified Petra and held it until the Moslem conquest drove the Franks out of the Middle East!. Petra was then completely abandoned and its location lost!.

The site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812, when it was discovered by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt!. It was famously described as "a rose-red city half as old as time" in a Newdigate prize-winning sonnet by John William Burgon!. UNESCO has described it as "one of the most precious cultural properties of man's cultural heritage!." In 1985, Petra was designated a World Heritage Site!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Of course!.

Here is a beautiful article!.!.!.

http://www!.saudiaramcoworld!.com/issue/19!.!.!.

Blessings,

JeanWww@QuestionHome@Com