The ancient city of Petra lies in the dramatic barrier of russet-coloured mountains that run beside
the rift valley of Wadi Arabah from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba."Rock"is what Petra means,echoing
its biblical name of Selah;and these wild and wierdly-shaped rocks which surround it seem at first sight
so impenetrable that it is hardly surprising that for over 1000 years the city was lost in obscurity,known
only to the bedouin.
Possibly as early as 580 BC the Nabataeans, nomads from Arabia,began filtering into these mountains,
filling the gap left by the Edomites who had moved into the richer,more fertile lands to the west of Wadi
Arabah,which almost deserted after King Nebuchadnezzar had taken Jews to captivity in Babylon.
The Nabataeans made their capital in Wadi Mousa,a valley blessed with abundant water and natural defences.All
the major trade routes of the day converged in their new territory.From here they took over and controlled
the caravan routes-to their enormous profit.
They also developed an astonishingly harmonious architecture which, even though it borrowed ideas from other
cultures,remained wholly Nabataean.A very early borrowing was the Assyrian crow-step design,used to decorate
tomb facades.Petra may appear as a vast city of the dead;it was an even vaster city of the living in its time,
but the buildings for the living proved less durable than the carved tombs for the dead.
