The City Half as Old as Time

T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) wrote: "...so you will never know what Petra is like, unless you come out here. Only be assured that till you have seen it you have not had the glimmering of an idea how beautiful a place can be."

We arrived at the Lost City of Petra early in the morning. And even at that hour it was already crawling with tourists from all over the world. Petra is Jordan's number one tourist attraction. In 1985 it was designated a World Heritage Site and in 2007 was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Petra is much more than just the site from an Indiana Jones film.

"The ancient city of Petra was built from 800 BC to 100 AD by the Nabetean Arabs. In this era Petra was a fortress, carved out of craggy rocks in an area which was virtually inaccessible. In the first and second century, after the Romans took over, the city reached the peak of its fame.

When caravan routes were slowly displaced by shipping, the city's importance gradually dwindled; it fell into disuse and was lost to the world until 1812, when it was re-discovered by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt."

It is an amazingly sophisticated city, literally carved out of a stone crack in the earth. The Nabateans cleverly engineered a system of dams, cisterns, and aqueducts to take advantage of the regular flash floods the area is prone to, which allowed the city to flourish even in the desert environment.

The entrance to Petra leads through the Siq ("the shaft"), a narrow gorge a little over a mile long. At some points the path is only about 15 feet wide with wall heights reaching 655 feet. At the end of your long dusty journey down the Siq, the spectacular sight of Al Khazneh ("The Treasury") awaits you.











The city of Petra covers an area of about 100 square kilometers with over 800 different monuments, temples, dwellings, steep staircases, and winding pathways. Needless to say, one afternoon is not nearly enough time to explore it all.











Up until 1985, the Bedul Bedouins were inhabiting the dwellings of Petra. Bedouin culture is the root and origin of all the countries of the Arabian peninsula and pre-dates Islam. In the mid-1980's, the Bedouin of Petra agreed to move out of the caves and into a small government subsidized village, Umm Sayhun, on the edge of what is now Petra National Park. Their traditional ways of life have eroded and have been replaced with a market-based economy based on tourism.

Vivien Ronay, a photographer who documented the Bedul Bedouin from 1988 - 2003, wrote, "Because of tourism, some of the people of Petra have gotten wealthy by tribal standards, and this has created economic disparity and a lack of trust. When I visited in 2001, everyone came to me to talk about these new troubles. Western anxiety just hadn't existed there before, and now it seems it has seeped into every nook and cranny."

Though the Bedouins do not live in the Lost City of Petra, they work there by day selling tourist trinkets, postcards, traditional textiles, soft drinks, and snacks.





This Bedouin girl, who was maybe four years old, was camped out with her mother and older brother in between the cliffs of the city, selling postcards to tourists.



Petra is beyond beautiful. Unfortunately, I think the unsustainable tourism heightened by the New Seven Wonders of the World designation is a real threat to the site. But I'm not sure what the Jordanian government can do to ensure that the beauty of Petra endures.

Zaman Means Old

While in Cairo we also went to a papyrus making demonstration at a local artist's studio, got a lesson in Egyptian essence, took a Vegas-style dinner cruise down the Nile, and sweated buckets in the hot, dusty Eqyptian museum. Eventually though, we had to leave the Cradle of Civilization and travel deeper into the Holy Land - namely, Jordan.

The flight from Cairo to Amman was 1.5 hours and then we immediately drove 3.5 hours from Amman to the small village of Petra in the mountains. When I've mentioned to people that we visited Petra, some light up with recognition and some have no idea what I'm talking about. If you've ever seen the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you know what I'm talking about. They filmed the last few scenes of the movie at Petra.



Look familiar?

But hold on a minute because now I'm getting ahead of myself.

We arrived in Petra rather late and immediately checked into our hotel. Our "hotel" was freaking awesome. It's called Taybet Zaman. It is a restored and converted 19th Century Ottoman village. Each stone house within the village has been converted into a guest room. It's built into the side of the mountain and has spectacular views of the Negev desert and mountains.







Here are some pictures of our hotel and our room. We had our very own enclosed courtyard complete with olive trees and water fountain. Our room was spacious and furnished with local Bedouin textiles and furniture.



















Okay, so I got a little camera-happy upon arrival at our room. It was just so unique and so unlike anywhere I had ever stayed. After I recovered from falling in love with Taybet Zaman, we ate dinner in the village restaurant, and then spent the evening strolling through the old stone streets. The village contains a pool and a Turkish bath house, plenty of terraces and gardens, a nightclub, and one narrow street containing small shops of local handicrafts. At sundown the air was cooler and you could smell honeysuckle mingling with the smell of stones that had been baking in the sun all day. The distant, but distinct prayer call at the local mosque echoed throughout the valley, and the whole atmosphere gave me goosebumps.

I can't adequately explain it. Everything felt so rich, tactile, multi-dimensional...and OLD. What can I say? I like old.