Petra

The abandoned rock city of Petra (Arabic البتراء al-Batra ') in present-day Jordan was the empire in the ancient capital of the Nabataeans. Because of their grave temples were carved their Monumentalfassaden directly from the bedrock, it is considered as a unique cultural monument. On 6 December 1985 Petra was added to the list of World Heritage Sites.

Location and importance
Aravasenke the east, halfway between the Gulf of Aqaba and the Dead Sea, Petra is located on an ascending from 800 to 1,350 m (30 ° 19'43 "N 35 ° 26'31" E) in a large valley in the mountains of Edom. Thanks to its strategic location at the crossroads of several caravan routes that had linked Egypt with Syria and southern Arabia to the Mediterranean, the city of 5 Century until the 3rd Century AD, a major trading center. In particular, Petra controlled a major hub of the spice road. This ancient trade route leading from the Yemen on the west coast of Arabia along and shared with Petra in a north-west branch, which led to Gaza, and in a northeastern direction in Damascus.

Favorable geography came to the hidden location Petras between steep cliffs and a safe water supply. The village is accessible only through a narrow mountain trail from the northwest or from the east by approximately 1.5 kilometers long and up to 200 meter deep gorge, the Siq (Eng.: "Shaft"), which at its narrowest point, only 2 meters is broad. About a carved into the cliffs of the Siq gully which was covered with stone slabs, led the Nabataeans water and a second ceramic water pipe drinking water into the city. Both are fed by a water supply in Wadi Musa, the "Mosestal" springing mountain stream.

The name Wadi Musa days refers to the entire area of the city. He goes to the close connection between rock and water back into the region. She gave birth to the legend, Petra was the place where Moses, the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt with the blow of his staff had a spring to gush from the rock. The fact is that the Nabataeans created with their skills in the management of water an artificial oasis and thus an essential prerequisite for flowering and growth of the city.

The water and safe location made Petra a preferred station for caravans from the south of Arabia, who were mostly loaded with luxury goods for buyers from all over the Mediterranean: spices from India and silk from China, ivory from Africa, pearls from the Red Sea and even of incense from southern Arabia. The resin of the frankincense tree was sought after throughout the ancient world as particularly valuable, religious offerings, and as a medicine. In the opposite direction came about Petra goods from the Levant, such as gold work from Aleppo to the markets of Yemen and Oman. Middlemen and tariffs dropped for the Nabataeans high profits.

The name of the town
As the Nabatean capital of their own called, had up to now not been definitely clarified. After one was not fully secured testimony Judaicae the Antiquities of Flavius Josephus, her name Reqem, Reqmu or Rakmu (Eng.: "The Red", the "Colorful"), which have been an allusion to the reddish color of the sandstone of Petra could.

The Old Testament mentions in the book of Judges (1.36) and in 2nd Paper King (14.7) a place called Sela in Edom (Eng.: "rock" or "stone"). But it is debatable whether this location is identical to the Nabatäermetropolis who testified at Strabo and Pliny the Elder for the period after 169 BC by the Greek name is Petra, which also means "rock". In the Hellenistic world there were many other places of the same name.

History
The town's history is intimately connected with that of the Nabatean kingdom. Except for a number of inscriptions of the Nabataeans, however, have barely left their own written testimonies. Their history and Petras can therefore only fragmentary and indirectly through open Bible, Greek and Roman sources.

Early Settlements
According to archaeological findings, the Valley of Petra as early as the Paleolithic Age was a time, and since the Neolithic period - from about 9000 BC - permanently settled. The Bible speaks of the Horites and Edomites who inhabited the area from about 1500 BC. After the conquest of territory by the Persians in the 6th Century BC was able to come from the interior of Arabia, the Semitic people of the Nabataeans around 500 BC, the Edomites to displace. They then went by the grazing for control of trade routes through that converged at Petra.

When they initially seem only semi-nomadic tents erected in the valley, and occasionally beaten cave dwellings in the rock to have. By the middle of the 4th Century BC, the Nabataeans had become, thanks to the trade in spices, incense and silver is already so wealthy that they aroused ambitions of their neighbors. In 312 BC, they escaped capture by Antigonus I Monophthalmus, one of the successors of Alexander the Great, thanks only to the impregnable position Petras. Only with the demise of the successor kingdoms and the rise of Petra to the capital of the Nabataeans in the 2nd Century BC began the actual flower.

Bloom
In the 3rd Century BC, the tent city was gradually replaced by permanent buildings. At the same time also seems to be the political power of entrenched and have developed a stable kingship. Their first known representative was for the year 168 BC in the 2nd Book Aretas I. Maccabees mention him and his successors managed to hold its own against the Ptolemaic Egypt and Petra extend the sphere of influence at the expense of the Seleucid empire even further. Equally important, the Nabataeans open to the cultural influences of their Hellenistic environment dominated.

His greatest learned the Nabatean kingdom of power during the reign of King Aretas III. Philhellen (87-62 BC). He conquered Damascus, joined in the power struggles of the Hasmonean Judea and besieged Jerusalem. However, the latter called Rome on the plan. On behalf of Pompey, the Roman general Marcus Aemilius horrified Scaurus Jerusalem, defeated Aretas III. and graduated in the year 62 BC in Petra a comparison with him.

After Aretas' death, although the kingdom fell into a vassal relationship with Rome, but remained inside autonomy and independence was true for almost 200 years. The prosperity of the city continued to grow and buildings increased from 1 Century BC still monumental forms. Currently Aretas IV (8 BC to 40 AD), the main temple was built as a representative building in the center of the city. It is estimated that Petra then was about 30,000 to 40,000 inhabitants.

Decline
Petra's gradual decline, however, had already initiated one of the predecessors Aretas IV '. Malichus I. (59-30 BC) had temporarily allied with the Parthians against Rome. The Romans, therefore, promoted in the aftermath of the ship traffic on the Red Sea and put on caravan routes, which bypassed Petra in the north. The last Nabatean king, Rabel II (70-106), carried the bill, as he moved the capital in the north, to Bosra in Syria today. Emperor Trajan conquered the Nabataeans in 106 final and merged it newly created province of Arabia as a kingdom with its capital at Bosra Petraea into the Roman Empire.

First of Jerash in the north of present-day Jordan was Petra compete as a commercial center. In the 3rd Century, it finally succeeded in the Sassanid divert the caravan trade to Palmyra in Syria. Petra thus lost more and more importance and prosperity, but remained inhabited until the Byzantine period into it. Under Emperor Diocletian Petra rose again to the capital of a province to - salutaris Palestine - was in late antiquity and even today's titular bishop of Arad.

Only after two severe earthquakes 363 and 551 and after the conquest of the region by the Arabs 663, the last residents of the city, which now fell even further. From its brick buildings, only the main temple ruins of Qasr al-Bint, the Temenos Gate, the remains of the main street, floor mosaics of the Byzantine church and a few foundations left over from other buildings. The monumental tombs and the theater, however, which had been carved from the red sandstone cliffs, over the centuries.

Beginning of the 12th Century Crusaders at Petra temporarily put two small castles on: Vaux Moise and Sela 'was an outpost of the great Crusader castle a few miles away Montreal. They all belonged to the Kingdom of Jerusalem Oultrejordain rule, which was conquered by the Ayyubid 1188/1189 under Sultan Saladin. In the centuries thereafter, sought only passing through Bedouin from time to time hiding in the empty tombs of the city. Around 400 years ago settled in the trunk of B'doul permanently in Petra and the surrounding region.

Petra today
Since the time of the Crusades, Europeans Petra was no longer enter. By 1800, only knew a few scholars rumors of a legendary rock ejected from the city in the Middle East. For Europe, Petra was first discovered in 1812 by the new Swiss Arabian traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. More than 100 years later, Thomas Edward Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) wrote in his book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: "Petra is the most beautiful city in the world." He was of the opinion that any description must for one's own experience of the city fade away.

Archaeological excavations in Petra took place only since the 20s of the 20th Century. A little later, the tourist development began in ruins.

Excaovatin
According to Burckhardt, who in the 19th Century, other European travelers visited Petra and described. Around 1900 began the scientific study of the place. In 1907, the native of Moravia, Alois Musil, Arabia researchers published in his book Arabia Petraea the results of a first scientific expedition, which had made an inventory of the then visible antiquities. During World War I Petra was absorbed by German-Turkish heritage Command under the direction of Theodor Wiegand. In the 20s a detailed survey was carried out by the archaeologist Rudolf Ernst Briinnow and Alfred von Domaszewski who draws up a preliminary map Petras. Even then assumptions were made which seem to be confirmed by new digs: The carved into the rock Monumentalfassaden were not solitary, but components of larger complexes of buildings, some of which were made of brick buildings.

The first archaeological excavations on the site of Petra were held 1929th More followed in 1935 to 37 and 1954th In 1958, began to excavate the British School of Archeology in order, the city center. Since then, archaeologists are constantly on the spot. The last major excavation campaigns carried out in the years 1993 to 2002. Under the aegis of the Jordanian Antiquities Authority submitted by the American scientist from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Iceland, the remains of the main temple (Qasr al-Bint) in the city center and the area around the Temenos Gate free.

Overall, were found in an area of approximately 20 square kilometers, about 1,000 buildings and building remnants. Have been excavated so far, but probably only about 20 percent of the ancient city area.