When Harrison Ford finally found the Holy
Grail inside the Khaznat al-Faron at Petra, at the climax of the film
Indiana Jones and the last Crusade, a new myth was born. But Ford,
and his scriptwriters, were only following in a long line of people who
have contributed to the myths, misinformation and confusion surrounding
the fabeled "rose-red city" of Petra - not only since its rediscovery in
1812 but as far back as the Middle Ages.
The list of misconceptions with which Petra has been plagued over the
centuries is almost overwhelming. Most are harmless errors in names,
dates, attributions and the like, but, taken as a whole, they detract
greatly from the reality of this important scenic and archeological site.
Since Indiana Jones had to reach his goal via the Shiq, the
two-kilometer (2200- yard) chasm leading into Petra, perhaps that is a
good place to begin a demythologizing tour of the site. The Shiq is a
great cleft in the earth, formed in the hazy depths of the geological past
by the same earthquake activity that has plagued the area ever since. Its
narrow, winding route through the lofty cliffs which protect the site on
the east remains one of the great experiences for the visitor today, and
is probably responsible for the belief that it was here that Moses struck
the rock to secure water for his wandering people after the flight from
Egypt - the first of the Moses-linked stories now associated with the
whole Petra Basin. The wadi (valley) that bisects the ancient city center
was dutifully dubbed Wadi Musa (Valley of Moses), a name first encountered
in the records of the Crusaders.
The Crusader leader Baldwin, just before he became king of the Latin
Kingdom in AD 1100, was summoned to Petra by "the monks of Saint Aaron,"
those records show, who claimed they were being harassed by "the
Saracens." After rescuing the monks, Baldwin returned to Jerusalem to be
crowned and to rethink Crusader strategy in his new kingdom. He soon
discovered that there were no fortified points south of "The Castle of
Saint Abraham" at Hebron, and he hastened to mend that deficiency. Along
with the fortresses still standing today at Kerak, Sho- bak, Tafilah and
elsewhere in Jordan, a fortress was erected in the "Valley of Moses" and
the legend of Moses' visit to Petra was thus given official recognition.
Obviously, the monks of Saint Aaron had much to do with this whole affair,
the better to establish their right to demand Crusader protection.
Little deceits can get out of hand, however, and soon other signs of
Moses' visit appear at the site. The Khaznat al- Faroun, where Indiana
Jones made his great discovery in the 1989 film, is another victim of the
early monks' tales. Khaznat al-Faroun means "the Treasury of the Pharaoh"-
and a myth goes with the name: The Pharaoh of Exodus, having mobilized his
forces to recapture the fleeing Hebrews, had reached Petra - after his
slight embarrassment at the Red Sea. But by then the weight of his
treasury, thoughtfully carried along, had begun to slow the progress of
his army. As a result, the story goes, the Khaznat al-Faroun was created,
by magic, and the Pharaoh's wealth deposited in the urn-like decoration on
its top. One can still see the pockmarks of Bedouin bullets, fired at the
"urn" in the vain hope that Pharaoh's gold would come tumbling down !
In reality, the Treasury is a Nabatean tomb,
probably royal, possibly even that of the famous King Aretas IV, Petra's
most enthusiastic architectural developer. The almost 40-meter-high
(131-foot) facade, hewn out of the living rock of the cliff which faces
the city side of the Shiq, is only one of more than 800 carved monuments
attributed to the Nabateans during their occupation of the site, from
sometime before the third century BC to the late fourth century of our
era. Inside the massive doorway, the tomb chamber lacks the decor found by
Indiana Jones - there are no Crusader statues, huge stone lions or inset
seals in the floor- and represents instead the typical, rather plain
interior design of Petra's funerary monuments. It is, of course, the
facade itself, one of the finest examples of Nabatean carving, which even
after some two millennia still awes the beholder who enters its forecourt
from the winding Shiq.
Somewhat later in Petra's history, probably also at the hands of
Crusaders or monks, another splendid royal tomb, situated high on a
mountain top, was refurished for religious use and received the name
ad-Dair, the Monastery. Originally neither a church nor a monastery, the
tomb is today one of the site's main tourist attractions, with the
connotations of its fictious name still firmly fixed.
Other tombs have likewise been given gratuitous names, even if no grand
legends are attached. For example, the ones which span part of the western
face of the mountain, Jabal al-Kubthah, through which the Shiq meanders,
are known today as the Royal Tomb Group, with each tomb facade possessing
a rather fanciful title - Three-Storied, Silk, Corinthian, Hall of
Justice. Since only one of Petra's tombs has any inscription on its facade
at all, inventing popular names for the more impressive ones has become a
tradition for map-makers and tourist guides. Probably, in the course of
time, each tomb will also achieve a story to go along with its name. This
is, of course, relatively harmless myth-making - as long as listeners
don't take the matter too literally or too seriously.
But tombs are not the only monuments at Petra which have acquired names
and legends. The few standing ruins on the site which escaped total
destruction during the devastating earthquake of May 19, 363 - along with
many no longer standing - were, and still are, fair game for the same
treatment.
The great masonry-built temple to the Nabateans' chief male deity,
Dhushares, is a prime example. Awed by the size of the building,
myth-makers again invoked the magic of the Pharaoh, and to this day the
building bears the name Qasr Bint al- Faroun, the Palace of Pharaoh's
Daughter. Here, again, the excess baggage of the pursuing monarch was at
issue; this time, however, it was his daughter who was slowing him down.
Therefore, the Qasr had to be built in which to park the young lady
against later recovery, after her daddy caught up with Moses.
Even a solitary column, left standing after the earthquake's ravages,
has been linked to the Pharaoh's fictitious visit to the site: it has been
given a rather obscene name that has remained something of an
embarrassment to guide-book publishers, who never translate the Arabic.
The temple that this author has been excavating since 1974, probably
dedicated to 'Allat, the Nabateans' supreme goddess, has fallen into the
name trap as well. Because of feline decorations on the capitals around
the altar platform, the "Temple of the Winged Lions" now occupies a
prominent place in the clouded annals of Petra, and poor 'Allat is left
out of the picture completely.
Less devastating to the innocence of tourists, but absolutely
horrifying to scholars, has been the myth-making of map- makers, right up
to the present day. The first of the modern cartographers was the
self-proclaimed rediscoverer of Petra, Swiss adventurer-scholar Johann
Ludwig Burckhardt (See Aramco World, September-October 1967). On
August 22, 1812, Burckhardt, traveling in disguise, persuaded the Bedouin
inhabitants of the small settlement of El-Ji (now Wadi Musa), just outside
Petra, to guide him to a local mountain called Jabal Haroun, after Aaron,
the brother of Moses. He passed through the Shig and into the ancient
site, as far as the foot of the mountain, beyond which his now-suspicious
guides would not take him. Having duly sacrificed a goat to the memory of
Aaron, Burckhardt hurriedly left the area, but observed enough around him
to produce a map - and the notation in his journal that he had
rediscovered Petra.
In reality, Petra was never actually lost, although it had been
somewhat misplaced since the days of the early Islamic geographers - who
had visited the site but were not particularly concerned about its name -
and its appearance on the famous Peutinger Table, a 12th-century copy of a
map of Roman-period trade and population centers. As late as 1778, Volume
II of The Works of Flavius Josephus, produced in London by Fielding
and Walker, included a map based upon the Onomasticon of Eusebius,
which accurately located Petra from the ancient distances recorded in the
latter work. But as far as the Western world was concerned, those earlier
records of Petra's location became irrelevant as people read and
appreciated Burckhardt's adventures.
Burckhardt's map, however, raised new problems
relating to the topography and place names of the site. In his rapid
overview of the area, Burckhardt picked out certain major landmarks - the
Khaznat al- Faroun, the Theater, the Qasr and others - but his memory of
their locations was only relative and the names he used to identify them -
for example, "Kasr Faroun" for Khaznat al-Faroun - were somewhat confused.
However, he opened the way for other intrepid travelers. More accurate
topography and locations were established, and monuments and other
features began to receive new names.
The first truly scientific study of the site, and quite a definitive
one, was done by R.E. Brunnow and Alfred von Domaszewski in 1897-98. Maps,
sketches, photographs and architectural analysis of the monument types
were augmented by same-language references to the reports of all previous
travelers to the site. As a consequence, the names given to features up to
that time became frozen in the literature, subject only to later attempts
to modify them in the present century and the addition of new names for
newly discovered spots.
One of the great miscarriages of map- making, still found in
guide-books and modern literature, was the "plan" of the ancient city
drawn by the eminent German scholar A. Wiegand for Bachman's volume on the
site published in 1921. Wiegand examined the evidence of fallen wall lines
in some detail and proceeded to outline what he thought were sub-surface
buildings, and even to identify their functions. Some modern writers still
display Wiegand's plan as a real picture of a city still buried beneath
the sand !
Fortunately, with the beginning of archeological work at Petra, modern
aerial and photogrammetric surveys have laid out the site with precision.
The latest map, produced by the Jordanian government, finally gives the
visitor a reliable picture of the site, the actual nature of some of its
remains, and the location of its principal monuments.
As more fact was gradually sifted from fancy, myth-making at Petra had
to turn to other aspects of the site, and the architecture of Nabatean
tomb facades and other visible ruins presented an appealing field.
Brunnow and von Domaszewski were really the first scholars to attempt a
classification of Petra's architecture, and their descriptive approach
opened the way for a series of later classifications that used different
criteria and different dating methods. Unfortunately, until modern
archeological work was done on the site, all of these largely lacked a
firm basis. Very recent architectural analyses, along with information
from excavations, seem to give us more reasonable information about
Nabatean architectural style, origins, and dates. Likewise, experts' views
on the origin of what is called the "Naba- tean Order" in architecture
have changed. Scholars now recognize that most of the Near East was
flooded with Hellenistic architectural and artistic craftsmanship before a
distinctive Nabatean style developed, and that the Nabateans also had a
penchant for borrowing ideas as they traded throughout the Roman world.
The result of these two factors was a characteristically eclectic mix of
tastes.
It was this question of outside influences on Nabatean architecture
that allowed for the most extensive myth- making. Initial discussion of
foreign influences in the Nabatean architectural orders - such as
"Assyrian" crow-step decoration, "Egyptian" moldings, "Roman" canons, and
so on - led to suggestions that outsiders had not only influenced
architectural style, but had in fact built the monuments as well. Remnants
of Western colonial bias strengthened the claim that it was only after the
conquest of Arabia by the Romans that certain of Petra's more elaborate
monuments could have been created. However, the subsequent excavation of
the Main Theater clearly demonstrated original Nabatean construction.
Since then, the bias against Nabatean originality and artistry has largely
evaporated, and the creative abilities of this early Arab people are being
recognized and appreciated more widely.
The city of Petra itself has become still another source of broad-gauge
myth- making, much of which can be traced back to one Reverend George
Robinson. Beginning with his publication of The Sepulcher of an Ancient
Civilization in 1930, a multitude of uninformed authors, including
some who had never seen the site and lacked any previous experience in
Middle Eastern archeology and culture, have proclaimed that Petra was
always a "dead city" - a city without a population. The degree of supposed
deadness varies from one author to another, depending upon the particular
degree of ignorance involved: Some vitality is grudgingly permitted by
those who see Petra as an ancient ceremonial or administrative center, but
even in those cases no major population is acknowledged as having been
present.
The tendency to view Petra as a mausoleum on a grand scale has even
reached into official circles, thanks in large part to a survey conducted
some years ago by a former us Park Service employee, who even found the
Bedouin then living at Petra detrimental to the desired funereal
atmosphere.
Yet if one climbs even a small hill near the site and looks down, the
extent of the ruins would suggest quite another viewpoint. A city of the
dead hardly needed the expanse of recognizable business district along the
Paved Street, nor an impressive public theater, nor baths, nor the two
major temples now brought to light, nor a magnificently laid-out hydraulic
system piping in water from miles away, nor the multitude of cisterns to
capture rainwater - not to mention the remains of villas and other living
quarters whose floor plans dot the basin.
Certain ancient sources, it is true, suggest a non-urban situation at
Petra. The historian Diodorus of Sicily, writing in the first century BC,
gives us the earliest authentic description of Nabatean Petra. Relying on
first-hand accounts of the late fourth century BC, he describes a non-
sedentary, non-agricultural "barbarian" people who harry their neighbors
and who have chosen to dwell at Petra in order to live a wild and solitary
life. A few scholars, commenting on Diodorus's account, have suggested
that he was, indeed, describing Nabatean life at Petra - but life as it
was in the late fourth century, some three hundred years before his own
time. Too few other commentators have appreciated the time gap between the
description and the report of it, and have sought to characterize Nabatean
life at Petra in Diodorus's terms. Yet Strabo,writing at about the same
time as Diodorus, gives a much different picture. Drawing on an account
from a living informant born in Petra, Strabo describes the city as
governed by a royal family, abundant in resources, and bustling with a
cosmopolitan population. Based on today's archeological evidence, the
latter portrayal of both people and city is accurate. Still further, the
Nabatean origin of Petra's technology and public works can no longer be
denied.
Indeed, after Rome's annexation of Nabatea in AD 106, it was not long
before the city was recognized as a metropolis in the official sense, a
title not bestowed by the Roman Senate on "dead" cities.
Most of the ancient sources left one question begging in their
descriptions of the Nabateans: the origin of the people themselves.
Although Diodorus does casually place Nabatean villages in the area of the
modern Gulf of Aqaba, he neglects to say whether this was an original
homeland or simply an extension of the Nabatean kingdom from Petra at a
later time. Numerous studies have been undertaken in an attempt to solve
the problem, and the bulk of evidence, it would seem, places the homeland
of the Nabateans somewhere in modern Saudi Arabia, from which they
migrated along the coast, finally settling at Petra.
A recent study by this writer suggests another overlooked possibility.
From hints dropped in the contemporary literature, from the strange
migration of the indigenous Edomites at Petra to the west - where they
became known as Idumeans - and from the question of the origin of the
rather advanced technologies displayed in Nabatean art, metallurgy,
hydraulics, architecture and other fields, it is possible to recognize in
the later Nabatean culture a remarkable blending of two early Arab peoples
- the long-sedentary Edomites and the vigorous, mercantile, caravaneering
Nabateans. The synthesis of the two resulted in one people with a combined
strength in both technology and trade, with the more vigorous Nabateans
providing the final national name for the blend. Those Edomites
discontented with the new scheme simply migrated to a new home and
received a Hellenistic version of their original Semitic name in later
literature. By the time of Diodorus's first- century-BC report, the
symbiosis had been forgotten.
There is one final myth about Petra that should be mentioned,
especially after Indiana Jones' recent visit: the nature of the real
archeological fieldwork involved.
The drama of Indy's triumphant dash to the Khaznat al-Faroun, the
romance of a "lost city" of magnificent stone monuments, the promise of
stupendous discoveries in the next trowelfull of earth all obscure the
everyday grind of the archeologist's labor - the price of the knowledge
that he or she uncovers about an ancient culture, its nature, its
development and the processes that brought it into being.
There is romance, of course: Anyone who has ever visited Petra has felt
the site's dramatic pull upon the senses. Yet there is also the drudgery,
dust and frustration that accompany excavation - and disappointment, too.
Petra does not reward the archeologist with treasure in the commonly
accepted sense. Rather, there is a daily mass of broken pottery, corroded
coins, mutilated architectural debris, unknowable fragments and the
constant knowledge that each season of work is only a pitiful drop in the
bucket of research that really needs to be done in Petra and surrounding
sites.
Yet there do come, now and again, complete vessels, readable coins,
bits of inscriptions, decorated fragments, architectural surprises and the
other finds that delight the hearts of dedicated excavators. These
discoveries, along with the other material remains and the intricacies of
the depositional strata of occupation - not the imaginative legends - are
what really tell the story of Petra and her people. They are the building
blocks for reconstructing the culture of a people, for understanding their
history and its chronology, and for seeking out the processes that made
them what they were. They are what make the people and the city, the
rose-red city of Petra, come alive once again.
A DAY AT THE DIG
What is a day of digging really like at Petra?This writer has
directed archeological excavations at the Temple of the Winged Lions for
the past 15 years, with earlier periods along the city wall and at the
Main Theater. The daily routine is part of a life quite different from
that of Indiana Jones. More than 200 Arab, American, European and Japanese
students have shared that experience at Petra, and helped bring back to
life the people of ancient Nabatea.
Morning begins at the grim hour of 4:30 a.m., generally to the sound of
the director's tape-recorded bagpipe music, thoughtfully supplied by a
colleague at the university. Breakfast is at five a.m. - provided the
propane cylinder isn't empty, the cook hasn't overslept and the water
supply hasn't broken down - with porridge as a main menu item. Site crews
and lab crews are at work by six, with the expedition's student
participants rotated on a weekly basis through the various jobs that make
up archeology today: supervising (and doing!) the actual digging,
surveying, processing the material remains recovered in excavation and
recording the results by making drawings, taking photographs, and filling
out endless forms. Break time comes at 10 a.m. - a half hour of sardines,
bread, jam, tea and just plain rest. Then more work until one p.m., when
activity on the site stops for the day and lunch follows.
The menu depends on the supplies currently available in the market at
Wadi Musa, and tends to feature rice in great abundance. After lunch,
people read, sleep or go for a swim in the small pool in Wadi Siyagha - or
make the 40-minute trek to the "real" pool at our neighborhood four-star
hotel. "Pottery mat" takes place at six p.m., when the sherds and other
artifacts of the previous day are examined, discussed and sampled for
later drawing. Dinner is at seven - with more rice. At eight, the on-site
crews gather at the "Daily Progress Chart" on the wall of the old Nazzal's
Camp, the dig headquarters, and work up the stratigraphic results of the
day's excavations.
While all this is going on, the field laboratory is busy processing
each day's recovered artifacts for registration and interpretation.
Pottery sherds are washed, sorted and photographed; bones are identified;
stone and plaster are brushed off; metals are cleaned; and the records
begin to mount up. Records are the life-blood of a dig, for archeological
excavation is destructive, and the only way a site's history can be
reconstructed is from whatever is recorded - notes taken during excavation
on-site, notes taken in the lab, sherd drawings, photographs, and a host
of other records, including actual material samples.
Such is the routine five days a week, for the six to eight weeks of an
archeological season. Fridays are days off, for trips around the Petra
Basin and similar exhausting recreational activities. Saturdays are
devoted to drawing pottery sherds -1065 of them last season - for dating
and comparison with published examples from other sites in the Middle
East.
But it's not all work, either. Thirty-five years of contact with the
Bedouins at Petra open the way for invitations to mansafs -
traditional feasts at which roast goat is usually served - weddings,
dances and all sorts of other local events. Dart games, card games, music,
reading and occasional birthday and un-birthday parties round out the
days. People get to know each other through conversation, in camp or at
Petra's "general store." An R&R trip to the beaches of Aqaba relieves
the monotony at mid-season, with an occasional need for recuperation after
the visit.
Myths aside - though we have our own myths and legends as well - such
is the reality of archeology at Petra.
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