Petra - History, Story and Facts

Petra is a historical and archaeological city in the Jordaniangovernorate of Ma'an, that is famous for its rock-cut architecture and water conduit system.

Established possibly as early as 312 BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans, it is a symbol of Jordan, as well as its most-visited tourist attraction. It lies on the slope of Mount Hor in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah (Wadi Araba), the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. Petra has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985.

The site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812, when it was introduced by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. It was described as "a rose-red city half as old as time" in a Newdigate Prize-winning poem by John William Burgon. UNESCO has described it as "one of the most precious cultural properties of man's cultural heritage"

Pliny the Elder and other writers identify Petra as the capital of the Nabataeans and the center of their caravan trade. Enclosed by towering rocks and watered by a perennial stream, Petra not only possessed the advantages of a fortress, but controlled the main commercial routes which passed through it to Gaza in the west, to Bosra and Damascus in the north, to Aqaba and Leuce Come on the Red Sea, and across the desert to the Persian Gulf.

History & Story about Petra

• Petra was never actually lost, although it had been somewhat misplaced since the days of the early Islamic geographers - who had visited the site but were not particularly concerned about its name - and its appearance on the famous Peutinger Table, a 12th-century copy of a map of Roman-period trade and population centers. 
• As late as 1778, Volume II of The Works of Flavius Josephus, produced in London by Fielding and Walker, included a map based upon the Onomasticon of Eusebius, which accurately located Petra from the ancient distances recorded in the latter work.
•  But as far as the Western world was concerned, those earlier records of Petra's location became irrelevant as people read and appreciated Burckhardt's adventures.
• The site suffers from a host of threats, including collapse of ancient structures, erosion due to flooding and improper rainwater drainage, weathering from salt upwelling, improper restoration of ancient structures, and unsustainable tourism. 
• The latter has increased substantially, especially since the site received widespread media coverage in 2007 during the controversial New Seven Wonders of the World Internet and cell phone campaign.
• On December 6, 1985, Petra was designated a World Heritage Site.
•  Salt blown in from the Dead Sea is crystallizing in the pores of the sandstone and slowly weakening the structures
• The Great Earthquake describes the violent earthquake of A.D. 363 that wreaked considerable damage to Petra, from which the city never fully recovered, and features a timeline of earthquakes that occurred within a 400-kilometer (250 mile) radius of Petra from the first century B.C. to the eighth century A.D.
• Arches The Byzantine Era explores the history of Petra in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., when Petra became an important center of Christianity within the Byzantine realm.
• Highlights in this section include a sixth-century A.D. marble pulpit from a Byzantine church called the Blue Chapel, which was part of a building complex that evidently housed one of the city’s prominent citizens, and a sixth-century A.D. scroll fragment, written in cursive Greek, that is part of an extensive will of a wealthy man named Obodianus, dictated from his sickbed.
• Petra consists of over 800 carved tombs, 80% of the original carvings are thought to be lost
• Highlights in this section include the two halves of an important ancient Nabataean statue which have been reunited for the first time in more than 1,500 years.
• Another very noticeable change is in the very center of the site, the hillsides lying on either side of the Roman Colonnaded Street which ran through the heart of Petra.  
• When I first saw them, these were simply hillsides.  Nowadays you’ll explore temples, the Cathedral, and the extensive Great Temple complex with its temples, garden and pool complex, Odeon and other intriguing features.
• The Petra basin boasts over 800 individual monuments, including buildings, tombs, baths, funerary halls, temples, arched gateways, and colonnaded streets, that were mostly carved from the kaleidoscopic sandstone by the technical and artistic genius of its inhabitants.
• Petra sights are at their best in early morning and late afternoon, when the sun warms the multicolored stones, you can view the majesty of Petra as it was seen first when discovered in 1812 after being lost by the 16th century for almost 300 years!
• Inside of the Treasury there are hidden coins.
• Petra was occupied in 1,200 BCE, but made the capital in 312 BCE.
• It is at Petra were King Aretas called for the arrest of the Apostle Paul at the time of his conversion.
• In 2006 the design of a Visitor Centre began. The Jordan Times reported in December 2006 that 59,000 people visited in the two months October and November 2006, 25% fewer than the same period in the previous year.
• Petra was the main topic in John William Burgon's Poem Petra. Referring to it as the inaccessible city which he had heard described but had never seen. The Poem was awarded the Newdigate Prize in 1845.