Petra: The Story of the Ancient City of Jordan

Petra was founded by the Arab Bedouin Nabataeans. At first, steep valleys and valleys formed a natural fortress to which the Bedouins could retreat, but over time Petra grew into a large city, which became the capital of the entire Nabataean sphere of interest.

When the city was at its strongest – in the last century before Christ – it housed some 20,000 inhabitants, and Damascus itself, one of the oldest cities in the world, was under the protection of Petra.

Trade made the city prosperous

The success of the Nabataeans came from the fact that they were shrewd businessmen. They controlled the major trade routes across the Sinai Peninsula to Alexandria in Egypt and down the Arabian Peninsula.

According to ancient Greek historians, the Nabatean caravans were as large as the armies on the march. Merchants brought with them goods as diverse as asphalt from the Dead Sea—a coveted commodity in Egyptian mummy-making—incense, spices, and precious luxuries from Asia to the great markets of Greece and the vast Roman Empire.

Trade not only brought great wealth to the city. It also opened up the cultural exchange between East and West, which can be seen in the many fine monuments of the city. One of the best examples is precisely the mausoleum that Burckhardt describes in such lyrical terms. The treasury, as the building is called today, is built in the Hellenistic Greek style.

By all accounts, it is a royal tomb from around the time of Christ’s birth, probably built for King Aretas IV, who ruled from 9 BC to 40 AD. It was also behind many of the other large buildings in Petra – including the city’s main temple and the Roman-inspired amphitheater that could seat some four thousand spectators.

The ornate facade of the treasury about forty meters high, which appeared in the third Indiana Jones film, is very popular today. It is not just the ravages of time. Over the centuries, many Bedouins took the building’s name literally, and pounded the elevated burial urn, believing it to contain treasure.

Like most of the monuments and buildings that can be seen in Petra today, the Treasury was carved out of the large red sandstone cliffs that dominate the area. So the city’s name couldn’t be more appropriate: Petra means stone in Greek.