Two thousand years ago, it was the capital of a powerful trading empire. Now archaeologists are piecing together a more complete picture of Jordan's compelling rock city
Posted on 12/20/2007 1:31:35 PM PST by SunkenCiv
[A]archaeologists are discovering that ancient Petra was a sprawling city of lush gardens and pleasant fountains, enormous temples and luxurious Roman-style villas. An ingenious water supply system allowed Petrans not just to drink and bathe, but to grow wheat, cultivate fruit, make wine and stroll in the shade of tall trees... And scholars now know that Petra thrived for nearly 1,000 years... Constructed during the first century B.C. and the first century A.D., it included a 600-seat theater, a triple colonnade, an enormous paved courtyard and vaulted rooms underneath. Artifacts found at the site -- from tiny Nabatean coins to chunks of statues -- number in the hundreds of thousands... No one knows where the Nabateans came from. Around 400 B.C., the Arab tribe swept into the mountainous region nestled between the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas and the Mediterranean Sea... The Nabateans developed a writing system -- ultimately the basis of written Arabic -- though the inscriptions they left in Petra and elsewhere are mostly names of people and places and are not particularly revealing of their beliefs, history or daily lives... By 100 B.C., the tribe had a king, vast wealth and a rapidly expanding capital city... Rome annexed Nabatea in A.D. 106, apparently without a fight... At its peak, Petra's population was about 30,000, an astonishing density made possible in the arid climate by clever engineering. Petrans carved channels through solid rock, gathering winter rains into hundreds of vast cisterns for use in the dry summers. Many are still used today by the Bedouin... on May 19, A.D. 363, a massive earthquake and a powerful aftershock rumbled through the area. A Jerusalem bishop noted in a letter that "nearly half" of Petra was destroyed by the seismic shock.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
Two thousand years ago, it was the capital of a powerful trading empire. Now archaeologists are piecing together a more complete picture of Jordan's compelling rock city
In before the ping.
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[sigh]
We’ve been there!!!! THe most MAGNIFCENT place I’ve ever seen. It’s not a HOLY place, but it is MAGNIFICENT!!
So, did they find the Holy Grail? ;-)
“He did not choose wisely”
I had read many, many years ago, that at END TIMES there will be 250,000 JEWS in PETRA....but I can find NOTHING and NO ONE who has ever heard that!! It was one reason why I wanted to see it....I had NO idea what it looked like.
Yup...I do.
I’ve not been there, but had seen plenty of photos in the past. I was struck by the sheer scale of “The Treasury” (as it used to be called) as shown in the above pic.
OMG!! And the walls inside are PERFECTLY CUT...and the room is HUGE! ANd the CITY IS HUGE also!! MANY, MANY buildings...and you can see (sp?) Jabaal Aaron gleaming white on a mountain top.
...let’s see... Archaeology, Smithsonian, Discover? (you used to), what else? :’D
Daniel 11:40-45 specifically 11:41
Matthew 24:15-18, (Mark 13, Luke 21)
Revelation 12:6,14,17
from that link:
“the 4,000-year-old King’s Highway”
That’s east of the era of the Cities of the Plain, four of which sites are under water now (Bela a.k.a. Zoar remained after the disaster; and ignoring Babedh-Dhra, which has been claimed by some to be either S or G).
I have this same picture, I took it myself when I was there. I lived in Jordan for a couple of years.
Science News, National Geo, National Review...
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