Petra And The Lost Kingdom Of The Nabataeans | Documentary

Jordan is an historic land. The country is awash with archaeological treasures. The most beautiful of all is undeniably the site of Petra. Inhabited since ancient times, the city first started to prosper in the 6th century BC when the Nabataeans, an Arab tribe who settled here, started to develop trade with the caravans who carried luxury goods such as incense and spices between Egypt, Syria, Arabia and the Mediterranean. Around the 8th century, a change in the trade routes and a series of earthquakes meant that the town was gradually abandoned by its inhabitants. Having been forgotten, the site was eventually rediscovered by the Swiss explorer Jean-Louis Burckhardt in 1812. In front of us is the first monument you see upon entering the site. It is known as the Djinn Blocks or the Reservoir. At the entrance to the site are the Djinn, which means spirit in Arabic. Some think that these were tombs. We believe that these were betrils. Bet means house in Semitic languages, or Arabic, and il means God. So betril means the house of God. Similar to the Greek and Roman statues, they may have been intended to guard the waters. Since it was hollow and there are canals over there at the top. Further on, at the necropolis of Gaia, the obelisk tomb serves as a striking example of the different foreign influences in Petra. A mixture of Egyptian and Greek style, this monument from the 1st century comes from the so-called classic period of Nabataean architecture. At the lower level, the banquet hall was intended to honor the dead. At the top, they were represented by the obelisks. At the start of the 19th century, Orientalism was all the rage in Europe. Who could fail to be fascinated and drawn to this thin passageway lined with graffiti plunging more than a kilometer into the mountain. As well as adopting the Greco-Roman gods, the Nabataeans also learned from their technical expertise. They created a system of aqueducts and reserves dug into the rock which carried water right to the heart of the town. Here we can see a part of the hydraulic system. This is the dam and the tunnel, which were covered over with earth until the 1960s. The tunnel enabled them to divert the course of the Wadi Musa around the Junta mountains in times of water shortage. The water then rejoins the Wadi Musa at the center of Petra. It represents an enormous amount of work. The tunnel is about 80 meters long and the system still works impeccably. We enter into the town by the Siq. The Siq means the shaft. It leads right into the center of town. Bab Siq is the Arabic for the Siq Gate. At the entrance there was a monumental archway which fell in 1895. It was greatly admired by travelers in the 19th century. Originally the Siq was a river, the former riverbed of the Wadi Musa. The river water undoubtedly contributed to the hollowing out of the rock. Thousands of years ago a river flowed here and its course had to be deviated to allow the development of the town downstream. It was paved over. Basically it was a street, a big road. In the 4th century BC this distant corner of Jordan became home to an incredibly ingenious people. The further we go down the Siq, the more the pathway narrows, like the representation of an initiatory ritual. For the modern-day tourist this forms the primary access road. But those who work in the center of Petra know that the Siq was just a lateral access road. It was an access road but also a professional way, with a certain religious and cultural significance. Along the way you see niches, shrines and carvings, both figurines and geometric forms. Further along the Siq, after the Bet-Til, is a small temple and a sandstone clearing. It too has been carved out of the rock. This is dedicated to Dushara, the supreme god of the Nabataeans. Here we stop and visit the Bet-Til. Before going on, the same on the way back. The Siq served as the umbilical cord of the city of Petra. It channeled the flow of visitors to the city, both commercial and religious. It was the fixed point of the town's development, and possibly also its limits. As you saw, there were channels cut into the walls of the shaft. They supported a series of clay pipes which carried water into the center of Petra. It appears that all of these structures were built during the Nabataean era, around the time of the birth of Christ according to certain of our colleagues, or a little later. The work was carried out in several stages, transforming the Siq into an important access road. And finally, we glimpse through a gap in two sandstone curtains one of the world's most beautiful sights, the Kasne, meaning treasure. At first all you see is a thin crack of light, then little by little the full scale of the monument is revealed. The Kasne was the tomb of the Nabataean king Aretas IV, who ruled during the first century BC. The tomb was dug out of the rock. The Hellenistic style façade measures 40 meters high and 28 wide. In recent years it was used as a backdrop for Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This monument is the image most people think of in connection with Petra. People immediately envisage this, Pharaoh's treasury, which is the Arab name given to the site by inhabitants of Petra a long time ago. We do not have exact information on its date, nor its function. As is often the case in Petra, there are no inscriptions. Our initial assumptions were that it was a symbol of royal power, that it might be a tomb or a funeral edifice, a funeral temple for one of the kings of Petra, one of the Nabataean kings, or perhaps a king and queen. The Kasne is actually the first floor. The way we see it today is deceptive, because it was actually raised 5 to 6 meters above ground, with a view over the square in front. It was accessible via a large staircase, which started at the middle of the square. Its construction covered over a number of tombs which previously occupied the site. The façade, which dates from the end of the 1st century BC, has survived well because it is protected by the sandstone cliffs. Legend has it that a pharaoh once passed through Petra and left his treasure in the urn which hangs over the façade. Since the 19th century, the Kasne has been of great interest to commentators because of the architecture of the upper part of the edifice. If one says edifice for a monument dug out of rock, it is strikingly similar to the architectural form shown in many paintings in Pompeii, with its central rotunda and the two lateral structures making up the broken pediment. There's an obvious reference to royalty and regal power, symbolized by the eagles at the top whose heads have now disappeared, and the parapet in the middle with a motif of Isis's hairstyle known as the basilion. The most common hypothesis is that this façade dates from the end of the Ptolemaic period. Let's say the 1st century BC. Recent scholarship would place it rather later. It may very well date from the 1st century AD. On either side of the vestibule, there are two carved figures, each one representing a man beside his horse. These would appear to be the gods Castor and Pollux. And there is a pediment, decorated with intricate foliage. Sculpted in the stone are Nabataean gods and goddesses, as well as Greek, Egyptian and Assyrian mythological figures. The Nabataeans were a people of Arabic origins, who seem to have come from the Arabic peninsula. Though we don't know exactly where, either from the south or east of the peninsula, or the northwest at some stage between the 6th and the 4th century BC. At the time, the Nabataeans were under attack from Antigone, one of the Alexander's successors. All this was recorded much later by Greek historians. It seems that the Nabataeans earned their wealth as caravan traders. They traded herbs and spices, precious and expensive products, which they imported from southern Arabia, essentially by caravan. Although it appears that at one stage, they also dominated the maritime trade of the Red Sea. Apparently, they were a very active people, who succeeded in amassing considerable wealth, probably during the Hellenistic period. They had military troops, who were apparently well respected by other powers. As was common practice in the day, they rented out or detached military troops to the service of other sovereigns. They also played an important diplomatic role at a time when the Hellenistic powers were crumbling, when the Romans were starting to establish themselves in the region. They were true sovereign leaders, comparable to other sovereign powers of the late Hellenistic or the Roman period. We don't really know if there was a period of decline. We know that the gravitational center of the kingdom shifted to the north. It has even been suggested that the last king, Rabel II, made his capital, or at least his second capital, in Basra, a major town in southern Syria. This explains, at least partially, why the Romans later nominated Basra as the capital of the province of Arabia. When we look at Petra, most of the grand monuments of the town center, and indeed a large part of the town, seems to have been laid out in a very planned and structured way by Obedas III and Aretas IV at the end of the first century BC and on into the first century AD. We don't get the impression of a town in decline. On the contrary, it was a growing town. The Roman era ought to have been a period of decline for Petra because the administrative and political importance of Petra was apparently reduced and shifted to Basra or to other towns further north. But in any case, the excavations that are currently being carried out in the town seem to show that there were major monumental projects being carried out during the Roman period and that a large fringe of the population was very prosperous. For example, ten or twenty years ago, our Swiss colleagues excavated a series of houses on the hill of Zantur, looking down over the town center. These are luxurious houses, which were constructed in the Nabataean era, but continued to be occupied well into the Roman era. Behind the Casernay is a short passage wider than the Seek leading to the lower town where we find the streets of facades and the necropolis. Along the so-called street of facades a number of imposing troglodyte temples stand one after another because the residents would make a display of their great wealth by having tombs and imposing monuments built along the street. Here in this necropolis of more than 800 tombs in the middle of the desert, the Bedouins lived their lives undisturbed for the desert belongs to no one else. Despite constituting the majority of the population of the area in 1921 at the founding of Jordan, the Bedouins now make up only 5-10% of the population. For these nomads, survival is difficult and driving the herds is no longer sufficient to live. Nowadays they've been employed by the desert patrols or they work as tourist guides. But the site attracts such a number of tourists that at one stage it was suggested that they should be settled in permanent modern housing. The proposition was in vain, their ancestral way of life is far too vital to them. On our left is the Nabataean theatre. It is similar to a Roman theatre but was built by the Nabataeans. Annexed in 106 AD by the Emperor Trajan, many traces of the Roman conquerors and their way of life in Petra still remain. The well-preserved Roman theatre is a good example. Carved out of the rock in the first century, the theatre had a capacity of 5,000 people. Many earlier caves and tombs were destroyed during the construction of the building. The cavities visible on the far wall are the last testimony to their existence. Here there are tombs both to our right and left. Those on the left were the tombs for the less wealthy residents, whereas those on the right were for rich and privileged citizens. They were known as the royal tombs. Why are these grand facades commonly referred to as the royal tombs? Once again there's no inscription. So we have no idea for whom these monuments were constructed. It is obviously possible, if you feel like playing a little game of prognostics, to come up with a relative chronology. We have a rough idea of which facades were dug out before the others, and we can try to attribute them to the important personalities of the first centuries before and after Christ, to kings and queens, and members of the royal family. But it is all purely hypothetical. These facades stand out from the innumerable funeral monuments in Petra. They make up several hundred out of the more than a thousand cave tombs. They stand out for their distinctive architecture. Especially noteworthy is the tomb known as the Corinthian tomb, which is like the Kasne in that it is topped by a decorative rotunda, much like another monument on the other side of Petra known as the Deir, meaning monastery. These three facades are crowned with an upper level, organized around the rotunda, which was rare for the region and must have been exceptionally sumptuous. A little further to the right is the largest facade within the site of Petra, the Deir. This tomb is called the palatial tomb or the multi-story tomb. It is unusual because it was only partially constructed in stone. The superstructures were created, built out of stone. They used large blocks of stone covered with a stucco finish, of which you can still see large sections on the facade. The tomb which is currently behind me, known as the Urn tomb, is also sometimes referred to as the cathedral. Because in 446 A.D. it was transformed into a church. The inscription at the end is still easily legible. It is painted in red. The Urn tomb was originally a large tomb, of which certain caves, certain graves, are still visible at ground level. At the end on each side were apses. Afterwards, when the tomb was transformed into a church, these alcoves were adapted into an apse which formed the chevet of the church. As you can see, there was a large terrace surrounded by porticoes cut into the stone leading up to the stone archways which collapsed sometime in the middle of the century, giving it a very unusual appearance. Later on, this tomb, or rather the crevices in the rock above the tomb, were used as prison cells. And the site is traditionally referred to as the prison or the tribunal. For once, we actually have a written inscription. In this sector, an inscription was found which mentions a Nabataean minister called Hunaychou who we believe lived in the first century, around 70 A.D., and who would appear to have had his tomb in this sector. The inscription is interesting because it talks about the outbuildings of the tomb, shows that the tomb wasn't just a single monument but a whole burial complex with a garden, a portico and very often a cistern. We have already seen examples of dining rooms, canyons, banquet halls which were undoubtedly used for family gatherings in honour of the dead. The tombs were obviously important, especially in terms of water distribution. There's a whole network of channels for water collection and distribution. There were also various canals. The water channels are always featured in the facades. The Nabataeans had expertise in various domains but especially in the domain of hydraulics. They tried to capture every drop of water possible. That's why we see so many cisterns and canals. We have already discovered 280 cisterns here in Petra. Here, as elsewhere, there's a canal. At the time of Christ, Petra was at its apogee and its wealth was a source of both admiration and envy. During the 1st century AD, threatened by the growing economic power of the Nabataeans, Rome decided to create new maritime trade routes cutting off Petra's economic activity by diverting the caravan routes through Palmyra and Lebanon. That which brought both fame and wealth to Petra was the view over the lower town. After the theater, the main road continues. It was paved by the Romans. At the bottom of the lower town, you can still see a long stretch of this Roman-paved street. At Nymphaeum, thermal baths, squares. A mini-Rome was hidden within this lunar landscape. The discovery of the site or should I say its rediscovery by the West. We shouldn't forget that the site has always been inhabited and known to residents of the area. However, in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, they were not keen to allow foreigners in. Legend had it that these ancient monuments contained hidden treasure troves which local people wanted to protect. It was a British-educated Swiss explorer, Jean-Louis Burckhardt, originally from Basel, who first visited the site in 1812. He gained access to the site by pretending to be a follower of Harun, a pilgrim come to sacrifice a goat to the prophet, whose tomb is said to be situated on the mountain to the south of Petra. He was on his way to Syria from Egypt and he was very wary of being taken for a spy. The situation at the time was very tense and he didn't want to be taken in by the Ottoman military authorities controlling the area. He passed quickly through the town on his way to and from the foot of Jebel Harun. His guide was deeply suspicious and he was only just able to make a quick sketch of the Qazneh treasury before crossing the town and heading out towards Mount Aram on the path which is still used by hikers today. He was obviously deeply impressed by the monuments, particularly the Qasr el-Bin behind us now. When he arrived in Cairo he did research and discussed the matter with members of Cairo's European society. He found references which helped him to identify the ruins as Petra. Unfortunately, the account of his journey was not published until his death, several years after his discovery. Nonetheless, it was very useful to future explorers. David Roberts was a Scottish painter who visited Petra. He had travelled throughout the Near East and was probably in contact with his predecessors. For archaeologists, these documents are extremely interesting. The original drawings, when we can get hold of them, give us a wealth of information about the actual state of the monuments at the time. He made a series of drawings from which he later made etchings, some of which are in colour. David Roberts was one of the first artists whose drawings were published in colour. The etchings of Petra were extremely popular both in Europe and America. After this came a string of great voyagers. And finally, at the end of the 19th century, epigraphical expeditions to study the Nabataean inscriptions. The first major excavations started when Jordan was recognised as an independent state after the First World War. Prior to this, there had been some archaeological excavations. As of the 1920s, primarily British and later American teams of archaeologists explored Petra. And they unearthed a large collection of major monuments. Here behind us we see a small part, although the majority have been excavated in the last few years. Many of the tombs and cave monuments were also explored at that time. In recognition of the importance of the discovery, the site of Petra was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on December 6, 1985. The surrounding area was declared an archaeological national park in 1993. In the 50s, 60s and 70s, the explorations focused on the centre of the town, especially the long paved street which forms the central axis. The large edifice behind me now, traditionally known as the Grand Temple, though it was in fact undoubtedly a civic complex, was explored, excavated, and restored by a team from Brown University in the United States whose work continues today. For our part, in 1999, the French team took over the work that had been started in the 80s on the Grand Temple, known as Qasar el Bint, and the holy compound surrounding it called the Temenos. Our work is focused mostly on the compound and the monuments in front of the temple. With time, the volcanic reaction forces liquid with a high salt content to rise up through the sculpted cliff faces, endangering the whole site. The Roman areas of the lower town are very poorly preserved. These stone constructions suffered hugely during the major earthquake in 363 A.D. Most of the temples are concentrated in these areas. This monument is unique because it is the only one which was entirely constructed in Petra. It continues to stand today thanks to an artisanal technique. The three wooden friezes have helped enormously to create the Islamic Arab fertility goddess, one of the three most revered divinities at Mecca. This monument is here in the lower town where most of the public monuments are found. It was Petra's Acropolis. After the damage of the earthquake in 363 A.D., But let's get back to the year 330. Petra is part of the Catholic Byzantine Empire and the Empire encouraged the spread of Christianity here by building churches in the lower town. A cathedral and three other churches were found during the excavations. But Petra was hit by a violent earthquake on the 19th of May, 363, which damaged many monuments such as the theater, the churches, and the aqueducts. The town, already weakened since the start of the Roman rule by the reduction in commercial activity, was not rebuilt and slowly the inhabitants started to leave. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, claims that almost half of the town was destroyed when the earthquake hit at the third hour and especially at the ninth hour of the night, giving a picture of the earthquake and its terrible aftershocks. The temples are mostly concentrated at the bottom of the lower town. There are four temples as well as the cathedral. This is a Byzantine church from the 5th and 6th centuries. Discovered, excavated, and restored by our colleagues at the American Center of Amman in the 1990s, it consists of the courtyard where we are now. For all of the reconstruction, especially for the chapels inside the church, stone blocks dating from the Nabataean and the Roman periods have been reused. The stones came from the many large monuments which once stood on this hill. There is a baptistery at the back here which is very interesting, a very pretty baptistery which is awaiting restoration. As you can see at the center of the peristyle courtyard, the atrium is a large bottle-shaped cistern which is quite typical for cisterns in sloping areas which are quite common in Petra. It continues to collect lots of rainwater today. The decor that you see in the church now dates from its latter period, around the 6th century. The mosaic tiling in the aisles has been very well preserved. These mosaics are not nearly as fine as those you see in Madaba. They are more similar to Palestinian mosaics from the same era, especially those found in Gaza. They are very interesting. On one side they depict some very original images of the creation animals which can't have been seen very often around here, giraffes for example. On the other side is a series of characters whose central theme is the wisdom of God, who governs the world and the weather. On the other side we see the mythological representations of the seasons, busts showing the four characters Spring, Autumn, Summer, and Winter. The excavation that you can see below us now is the work on the Khazar al-Bint being carried out by the French mission. This is part of the Petra Ouad Hiram mission, which to my honor I am currently directing. Work is being carried out on the whole of this sector, which was part of the Esplanade of Antigua. This is one of the unique alleyways of the Grand Temple, the Khazar al-Bint, whose name, the Castle of the Pharaoh's Daughter, refers to a local legend. The story goes that the pharaoh, a legendary king of Petra, promised to marry his daughter to anyone who could bring water to Petra. What is interesting here is that underneath the paving stones we have discovered the remains of houses which predate the Nabataean Temple. They probably date from the 3rd or 2nd century BC. They are not at all in line with the axis that you see here now, which is a north-south axis. This indicates that the town center where we now stand was truly the heart of the town of Petra and was already inhabited by the Nabataeans. This discovery has been one of the major advances made by the mission in the last few years. Here at the edge on the Nabataean wall was a monument. There you can see the remains of the apse. It housed the statues of the two emperors Marc Aurel and Lucius Verus. Here we have the archaeological confirmation of the texts of the monumental inscriptions which were also discovered on this site. The pilgrimage to Petra continues and it is only after mounting the stairway of 800 steps cut into the rock up the side of the hill that we arrive at the dair, known as the monastery. We are now in front of the dair, or monastery. It's a tomb much like the other royal tombs. It is similar to the treasury or kazne, the most decorated and best preserved façade of Petra. Here the decoration is less rich, but it is slightly larger. 45 meters wide and 50 meters high, the dair is the second largest monument in Petra. The name dair was given to it in the 4th century during the Byzantine era, when the building was used as a monastery by the first Christians. Carved out of a mass of yellow sandstone, this ancient tomb looks similar to the kazne. The seminal monument at the entrance to Petra, although its decoration is less intricate. The urn which dominates the structure alone is 10 meters tall. Before leaving Petra, we stopped to reflect once more upon the glory of an empire, which at its peak extended from Syria in the north to the Negev plateau in the south, covering a large part of Egyptian Sinai and Arabia. You could easily imagine yourself in the USA passing through the monument valley, except that here the incredible natural pink color of the desert has nothing to do with the spectacular sunset effect or the artificial wonders of a technicolor film. It is one of the world's most beautiful deserts, different from the vast stretches of the Sahara.