Petra: Rock-Cut Capital of the Nabataean Kingdom in Jordan

Petra is an ancient city in the mountains of southern Jordan, famous for tombs and temples carved directly into its red sandstone cliffs. It was the capital of the Nabataeans, an Arab people who grew wealthy from the incense and spice caravans crossing Arabia, and who are first mentioned in history in 312 BC. Annexed by Rome in AD 106 and forgotten by Europeans until 1812, Petra is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most visited archaeological sites in the Middle East.

Who were the Nabataeans?

The Nabataeans first appear in Greek sources as nomadic Arabs living in the deserts east and south of the Dead Sea. The historian Diodorus Siculus, drawing on an eyewitness of the late 4th century BC, describes them as herders who lived in tents, refused to build houses or plant crops, and stored water in secret underground cisterns. That knowledge of water would later make Petra possible.

In 312 BC, during the wars of the Diadochi that followed Alexander the Great’s death, Antigonus I Monophthalmus sent an army under his officer Athenaeus against the Nabataeans. Athenaeus raided a stronghold described as “the rock”, where the Nabataeans had left their goods, but was then defeated on his way back. A second expedition under Antigonus’s son Demetrius also failed. Whether this “rock” was Petra itself or a nearby height is still debated.

Over the following centuries the Nabataeans settled down. By the 2nd century BC they had kings, the first known being Aretas I, who is mentioned in 2 Maccabees around 168 BC. Their language was Aramaic in writing, and their distinctive script is the ancestor of the Arabic alphabet.

Incense, trade and a growing kingdom

The Nabataeans’ fortune came from their position on caravan routes. Frankincense and myrrh, harvested in southern Arabia, were in high demand in the Mediterranean world for temple ritual, funerals and medicine. Camel caravans carried them north through the Arabian Peninsula, and the Nabataeans controlled the stretch leading to the port of Gaza and to Damascus.

They also handled spices, textiles and other goods arriving from India and East Africa through Arabian and Red Sea ports. The Greek geographer Strabo, writing around the time of Augustus, describes Petra as a well-governed city where foreigners and citizens lived together and where the king was approachable and frugal. He also notes that the Nabataeans valued wealth so highly that anyone who diminished his property was publicly fined.

Under kings such as Aretas III (c. 87-62 BC) the Nabataean realm expanded north, at one point controlling Damascus. This brought it into contact and conflict with the Hasmonean kingdom of Judea and with Rome. In 62 BC Pompey’s officer Marcus Aemilius Scaurus marched against Petra, but the campaign ended with a payment rather than a conquest. The Nabataeans became Roman client kings, allies who kept their own rulers.

Relations with Judea were close but often hostile. Herod the Great had a Nabataean mother and fought wars against Petra. Later, Herod Antipas divorced a daughter of the Nabataean king Aretas IV, which led to a war in which Aretas defeated him around AD 36.

Aretas IV (9 BC - AD 40) presided over Petra’s golden age. Many of the city’s grandest monuments, probably including the Treasury, are attributed to his reign. The last king, Rabbel II (c. AD 70-106), moved more activity to Bostra in southern Syria.

The rock-cut monuments

Visitors reach Petra through the Siq, a narrow winding gorge about 1.2 kilometres long between towering walls of rock. At its end the gorge opens suddenly onto Al-Khazneh, “the Treasury”, a facade about 40 metres high carved out of the cliff. Its two storeys of columns, pediments and a round central pavilion show a strong Hellenistic influence, blended with Nabataean taste. It was most likely a royal tomb, and excavations in 2003 uncovered burial chambers beneath its forecourt.

Beyond the Treasury the valley widens into the Street of Facades, lined with tombs, and a theatre cut into the rock that could hold several thousand spectators. On the eastern cliff stand the Royal Tombs, including the Urn Tomb, the Silk Tomb, the Corinthian Tomb and the Palace Tomb. High on a mountain to the north-west, reached by hundreds of rock steps, is Ad-Deir, “the Monastery”, a facade about 47 metres high and nearly 50 metres wide, probably a sanctuary connected with a deified king.

Hundreds of tombs and other carved monuments survive across the site. Only the facades and chambers were cut from the rock; most people lived in freestanding houses of stone, many of which have been excavated. The city centre also had a colonnaded street, markets, baths, the Great Temple and the temple known as Qasr al-Bint, dedicated to the main Nabataean god Dushara.

Water in the desert

Petra lies in a dry landscape with sudden winter floods. The Nabataeans mastered both problems. They cut channels into the rock along the Siq to bring spring water from Wadi Musa into the city, sometimes in clay pipes. They built dams to divert floodwater away from the gorge, and hundreds of cisterns and reservoirs to store rain.

This system allowed the city to support a population that modern estimates place at roughly 20,000 to 30,000 at its height, and to grow gardens and even a large pool complex with an island pavilion near the city centre. It is one of the most impressive examples of ancient water engineering in the region.

Roman and Byzantine Petra

In AD 106, after the death of Rabbel II, the Roman emperor Trajan annexed the Nabataean kingdom as the province of Arabia Petraea. The annexation seems to have been largely peaceful. Rome built a new highway, the Via Nova Traiana, from Bostra to the Red Sea at Aila (modern Aqaba). Petra received the title of metropolis, and the emperor Hadrian visited it in AD 130.

The city remained important but declined slowly. Trade routes shifted towards the Red Sea and Palmyra, and a severe earthquake in AD 363 damaged many buildings. In the Byzantine period Petra became the seat of a bishop. The Urn Tomb was converted into a church in the mid-5th century, and a church with fine floor mosaics was excavated in the 1990s, where a cache of carbonised 6th-century papyri was also found. After further earthquakes and the end of Byzantine rule, the city was largely abandoned, although Crusaders built small forts in the area in the 12th century.

Rediscovery and modern fame

For centuries Petra was known only to local Bedouin. In August 1812 the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, travelling in disguise as a Muslim scholar under the name Sheikh Ibrahim, persuaded a guide to take him through the valley on the pretext of sacrificing a goat at the shrine of Aaron on nearby Jabal Harun. He saw enough to identify the ruins as ancient Petra. His account was published in 1822, after his death.

Artists and travellers followed, including the Scottish painter David Roberts, who visited in 1839 and whose lithographs made Petra famous in Europe. In 1845 John William Burgon described it in a prize poem as “a rose-red city half as old as time”, a phrase that stuck. Petra was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985 and was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a popular vote in 2007. Many people also know the Treasury from the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

Myths and facts

The Treasury got its name from a Bedouin legend that a pharaoh or bandit had hidden gold in the stone urn at the top of the facade. Bullet marks on the urn show that people tried to shoot it open. There was never any treasure inside; the urn is solid rock.

Another myth is that Petra was a “lost city” until 1812. It was lost only to Europeans: the Bdul and other Bedouin lived among its tombs and knew it well.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 312 BC: Antigonus I sends expeditions against the Nabataeans, their first appearance in recorded history.
• c. 168 BC: Aretas I, the first known Nabataean king, is mentioned in 2 Maccabees.
• 62 BC: Roman forces under Marcus Aemilius Scaurus march on Petra; the Nabataeans buy peace.
• 9 BC - AD 40: Reign of Aretas IV, Petra’s golden age; the Treasury is probably carved.
• AD 106: Trajan annexes the kingdom as the Roman province of Arabia.
• AD 363: A major earthquake damages much of the city.
• August 1812: Johann Ludwig Burckhardt becomes the first modern European to visit Petra.
• 1985: Petra is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• 2007: Petra is voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Why it matters

Petra shows how a small desert people turned control of trade into a sophisticated urban culture that fused Arab, Hellenistic and Roman influences. Its rock-cut architecture and water systems are among the great achievements of the ancient world, and its rediscovery helped shape European fascination with the Middle East. Under the Pax Romana it remained a bridge between Arabia and the Mediterranean.