Posted on 12/31/2004 12:11:54 AM PST by BlackVeil
MEDA'IN SALEH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Sheltered from the world by an ancient religious curse and modern Middle East conflict, a spectacular ruined city lies almost hidden in the northern deserts of Saudi Arabia.
More than 100 tombs and burial chambers are carved elaborately into rocky outcrops across the sands of this city, still bearing names and ornate religious symbols chipped into the sandstone 2,000 years ago. Nearby volcanic mountains, decorated with the 10,000-year-old art of prehistoric hunters, tower over a palm-filled oasis and an abandoned mud house village.
Through them all snake the remains of an Ottoman railway, built to carry Muslim pilgrims from Damascus to Medina and blown up by Lawrence of Arabia's Bedouin army in World War One.
Saudi Arabia's top tourist attraction is rich in history and austere desert beauty. Only the tourists are missing.
"We get about 50 foreign visitors a month," said guide Hamid Benbouazza. "Before the attacks in Riyadh last year we used to get more, but people are scared."
Saudi Arabia, a deeply conservative Muslim kingdom, has always been ambivalent about letting tourists cross its borders. A wave of Muslim militant violence since May last year has further dented hopes of opening up to the world.
A bloody attack in the city of al Khobar six months ago was particularly devastating.
DIVINE WRATH
One morning in November, during the peak season holiday, just a few small groups of foreign visitors and Saudis explored Meda'in Saleh, the southern capital of a Nabatean trading kingdom which flourished two millennia ago.
Its northern sister city Petra, the "rose-red city half as old as time," is the centerpiece of neighboring Jordan's tourist industry and attracts half a million people a year.
But the empty tombs at Meda'in Saleh -- nearly 600 miles northwest of the capital Riyadh -- have never drawn crowds, despite holding a strategic position on the pilgrim trail from Syria.
Religious texts and local legend about Meda'in Saleh's ancient misdeeds intertwined over the years until it was considered to be cursed.
"God showered gold here for seven days, and gave them a camel which provided milk for all," said Sultan, a Saudi man leading his children down a row of tombs carved into golden-brown rock. "But they were corrupted and rejected his message, so he made the earth swallow them up."
When the Prophet Mohammad passed through the area he rejected food and water offered from Meda'in Saleh.
For centuries, pilgrims trekking south to Mecca averted their eyes as they passed, fearful of stirring the divine wrath which they believe struck its early pampered inhabitants.
The ancient curse lingered on into the 20th century, when Saudi Arabia's highest council of Muslim scholars decreed that residents living close to the ancient tombs should be relocated.
END OF THE LINE
When the Ottoman rulers, whose empire stretched from Istanbul down to Arabia's western coast, built a railway linking Damascus to Medina, they laid the line through Meda'in Saleh.
Within a few years the Hashemite rulers of Mecca, backed by Britain, rose up against the Ottoman empire and targeted the railway as part of a guerrilla war. They blew up the tracks in hit and run attacks and the line never reopened.
A century-old black steam engine still stands in a railyard just north of the rock tombs, near a Turkish garrison fort.
Further south a lone carriage sits on a length of track in a narrow valley between the mountains, the latest relic from civilizations stretching back through the Ottomans, the first Arab Muslims, Nabateans, Lihyanites and primitive hunters.
Eighty years after the railway's destruction, Meda'in Saleh is edging out of isolation. A mountain road opened this year brought the Red Sea airport of Al-Wej within two hours' drive.
But there is little chance of any tourist stampede.
Saudi Arabia's conservative royalty and religious scholars have shown little enthusiasm for visitors aside from the millions of Muslims who make the annual pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
And tour companies are hard pressed to promote a country where alcohol is banned, women must cover themselves from head to foot and summer temperatures top 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Young women are not allowed to travel unaccompanied.
Recent steps to open up the kingdom and diversify its oil-dependent economy have been undermined by al Qaeda attacks on foreigners, including suicide bombings, kidnappings and shootings.
Western countries advise their nationals to avoid all but essential travel to the kingdom and the United States has urged thousands of U.S. residents to pack up and leave.
"Every single booking we had for June and July was canceled. My boss told me to go home," one Meda'in Saleh guide said.
A ruined city in the desert ... and it is haunted as well! So much the stuff of romantic travellers tales, but it seems to be an authentic and interesting site.
GGG Ping.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Calvin to show Petra exhibit
Grand Rapids Press ^ | Friday, October 15, 2004
Matt Vandebunte (cont. by Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood)
Posted on 10/16/2004 6:27:42 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1247465/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://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1057912/posts
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Danger! Intentional dysuse of language!
ping
Very interesting. Thanks for the ping. Not sure why the whole site is considered to be cursed. If the Saudis ever open it up, archaeologists will probably find a lot of the ancient Nabatean water works. For sure, the area was greener when inhabited.
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