Hot, gritty dust stung my eyes as a sharp wind whipped up the scorching sand from my feet. Pulling a scarf up over my mouth and nose I looked out at the scene before me. Here was history – here was life – here was mystery.
A-top the high place of sacrifice I felt unworldly. My feet crunched on shards of ancient pottery littering the sand beneath me; fragments of a civilisation long since expired. Silence swam around me broken only by the chirp of the crickets and the soft lilt of a flute played by a Bedouin below me, his mournful notes drifting up to this high place.
The abandoned city of Petra lay before me mapped out in rock – rust-red and craggy – the outcrops nestling back against the deep blue sky. It was dazzling and my eyes struggled to absorb the brilliance of the landscape stretched out across Wadi Araba.
The heat was oppressive – 43 degrees – and rising. The climb from the Treasury had been arduous – clambering over boulders, smooth and worn, their surface hot to the touch. Yet somehow it had been satisfying as my hands struggled to secure a safe purchase on the climb upwards through the canyon. Scrabbling across loose scree, sprigs of wild Artemisia had provided a welcome aid as my fingers grasped their rough stems in an effort to retain balance. Treacherous rock ledges, precarious and un-nerving, had formed themselves into rocky shelves set deep into the canyon face, the drop below terrifying. The mantra ‘ look into the rock – don’t look down’ had swirled wildly around in my head.
But now I was here – at the highest point – my dusty feet stamped either side of the stone sacrificial tablet. Looking out at the arresting view before me I was dumb struck: layer upon layer of ancient tombs carved out of the rock faces, their round entrances forming open mouths peering back at me in expressions of mock wonder and surprise.
I had longed to visit Petra – hankered to see its famous Treasury, reached only by a journey through the long Siq; a narrow passage flanked by towering rocky sides opening out at the end to reveal its secret – the rose-pink tomb. Seeing the Treasury for the first time is like discovering a new smell or colour – feeling a new texture – fascinating and absorbing yet slightly un-nerving. It is a huge structure, carved deep into the pink rock face, its towering columns fronting an intricately carved façade. Made famous by the first Indiana Jones film, this is a hidden, world – a deserted city built by the Nabataean people over 2,000 years ago. Peppered with ancient tombs and temples cut out of the surrounding rock, Petra basks in the hot desert sun.
On a warm Spring day in 1812, the Swiss explorer Ibrahim ibn Abdullah, otherwise known as Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, stumbled into the lost city, rediscovering it for the Western world. And ever since, archaeologists, travellers, and now tourists, have made their own discoveries in this New Wonder of the Ancient World.
Yet whilst many visitors limit their exploration to the Treasury and its environs, walk away from the centre and head off higher, climbing up into the hot dusty places where you will find eerie caverns, deep chambers and long forgotten tombs, their interiors layered with stripes of polished red and pink rock. Clamber up inside one of these secretive vaults and you will be rewarded with not only shelter from the scorching sun but a sense of ethereal peacefulness.
But Petra’s greatest secret has yet to reveal herself – for this the traveller must take the hour long climb up to the Monastery – in reality a temple dedicated to King Obodas 1. Steep steps have been cut out of the rock, taking wanderers higher and higher up the mountain face until reaching the summit. Here, the Monastery greets weary, sand-blasted faces. Another structure, not unlike the Treasury, yet this time somehow incongruous with its surroundings. Carved into the mountain, it presents an awe-inspiring sight, its huge frontage crowned with an enormous urn; its fascia carved and ornate. Here, the Nabataean people gathered in huge numbers to participate in religious ceremonies and ancient rituals. The haunting sounds of the birds whooping overhead only add to the unearthly sense of intruding into a long-forgotten, silent world.
For me, Petra really holds something special and that something lies in the fusion of ancient civilisations with nature. The rocky canyons protect this lost city hidden deep in Wadi Araba.
And as I stand alone at this high sacrificial point, I watch in wonder as the sun slowly sinks lower in the sky, casting a warm glow across the rose pink city of Petra – the lost city of the Nabataeans.
