Byzantine glass at Petra [ 2nd story, "Ritual horns do not predate Jewish expulsion" ]

Times Online ^ | August 25, 2008 | Norman Hammond

[SunkenCiv]

Petra, "the rose-red city half as old as time" in southern Jordan, is best known for its spectacular Nabataean rock-cut temples and the narrow entry through the gorge of the Siq, featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. But the site has a much longer history, with an early neolithic village on the hill of Beidha near by, and it was a regional centre in the Roman and early Byzantine eras.

During this latter period, a number of churches were built: one known as the Petra Church was probably built in the late 5th century and destroyed by fire a century later...

This church seems to have been a light-filled building. Dr Schibille's work on fragments of window glass shows that much of it was imported from the coastal region of what is now northern Israel. Electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) and X-ray fluorescence (ED-XRF), have established that 23 fragments are all soda-limesilica glass.

About 70 per cent of their make-up was silica, derived from sand, 15 per cent soda and 9 per cent lime; all of the glass was of blueish or greenish hue. This composition matches that of the "Levantine I" glass type, which Ian Freestone and his colleagues suggest was made in the Belus delta on the Bay of Haifa...

One piece of glass had an aberrant chemical composition, with high levels of manganese and antimony and a raised rim. Comparison with glass from mainland Italy suggests that it was imported from farther away, "potentially indicating the recycling of Roman glass or even the reuse of whole window-panes as spolia", something already attested at Petra.

[SunkenCiv]

It seems no work of Man's creative hand,
By labor wrought as wavering fancy planned;
But from the rock as if by magic grown,
Eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!
Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine,
Where erst Athena held her rites divine;
Not saintly-grey, like many a minster fane,
That crowns the hill and consecrates the plain;
But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,
That first beheld them were not yet withdrawn;
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,
Which Man deemed old two thousand years ago.
Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
A rose-red city half as old as time.

Petra by John William Burgon (1845)

[SunkenCiv]

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[Radl]

I was at Petra in 1998. I was trying to buy a picture from a Bedouin but he wanted 20 dollars. I wanted to pay 10. The guy agreed to 15 and we were about to close the deal when my wife felt sorry for the Bedouin and demanded I pay the full 20. We debated the price while he looked on scratching his head. I finally paid the full 20 (I was mad as hell). It was very quiet on the bus while returning to the hotel.

[SunkenCiv]

:’) “Can’t live with ‘em, pass the beer nuts.” — Norm Peterson, “Cheers”

Reconstructing Petra
Smithsonian | 2007 | Andrew Lawler
Posted on 12/20/2007 1:31:35 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1942465/posts

City Carved In Stone (Petra)
Sunspot/Chicago Tribune | 1-11-2003 | Robert Cross
Posted on 01/14/2004 11:09:07 AM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1057912/posts

The writing on the rocks
Al-Ahram Weekly Online | 9 - 15 January 2003 | Jane Taylor
Posted on 01/11/2003 4:39:54 PM PST by vannrox
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/821124/posts

[tarawa]

I spent pretty much a whole day scrambling across the rocks and hills at Petra. An experience that was quite worthy.

[SunkenCiv]

Sounds fun.