Petra: More Ancient than Assumed?
Hi guys, today I want to talk about Petra, a mesmerizing ancient city, also one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Petra is famous for its spectacular and massive rock hewn caves carved into red sandstone. These caves have been accredited to be the work of the Nabataeans, whom made Petra their capital city over 2,200 years ago. The Nabataeans were ancient nomadic Arabs, who initially settled in Petra due to its proximity to the incense trade routes.
Petra became a major regional trading center for the Nabataean kingdom which territory expanded to current day Jordan, Syria, Israel and Saudi Arabia. But the strange thing is, only one other Nabataean city shares similar rock cut architectural style with Petra, and that is Hegra in Saudi Arabia. The rest surviving Nabataean cities look nothing like the signature Petra style. Hegra, shares resemblance with Petra but still contains significant differences.
Thus questions arise as to whether the Nabataens really created Petra or instead simply discovered it and repurposed it as their own. Let’s explore this together. The area around Petra had been inhabited as early as 7000 BC. The Nabataeans might have settled in Petra in the 4th century BC. Archeologists suggest that many major structures were created about 2,000 years ago. The striking Rose City of Petra is huge. It extends through canyons, mountains and along river beds. If we include little Petra and nearby sites, Petra covers an
area of 263 square kilometers, which is about 65,000 acres, roughly 50,000 football fields. The walk through the entryway, the Siq alone, to get inside Petra, will take over 30 minutes. In this vast area, there are over 800 cave structures carved into cliffs. Even though many exterior facades have been eroded and damaged, we can still picture their former glory. One thing quite extraordinary about Petra is the many enormous megalithic rock cut caves. Please pay attention to the people in the photos to get a better sense of the scale of these stunning structures. One of the largest monuments, the Monastery, is 48 m wide by 47 m high,
equivalent to a 15 story building. The entire structure was carved in rock on a high altitude. People must hike a long way up to pay it a visit. Look at these photos of a local Bedouin man on top of the Monastery. It’s truly amazing how massive this structure is. The column capitals
of the Monastery exhibit the typical Petra style which can be seen in many other caves onsite. The rock facades of Petra are simply breathtaking. Have you wondered what the interiors look like? In contrast with the decorated facades, the big cave interiors are usually very simple and minimalistic, consisting of one or a few rectangular chambers with high ceilings. For example, the most famous structure in Petra, the Treasury, has a very Hellenistic exterior with a broken pediment with a central tholos, Corinthian-like column capitals and sculptures, while its interior is quite plain with a main chamber and three antechambers. The Treasury is over 37 meters high and has very tall doorway and ceilings. The interior is around 2,000 m3 which is more than the volume of an Olympic swimming pool.
How much intense labor must have been implemented to excavate and remove this much stone? It’s very possible that the masons spent more time excavating the austere interior than working on the elaborate exterior. The Urn Tomb is another impressive cave with an even grander chamber. This cavernous cave shares a similar simplistic style with almost no decoration inside, sharp 90 degree corners and oversized rectangular doors. It’s 20 m long, over 17m wide and about 10m high, which means its interior is over 3,400 m3. Whoever created this cave made the incredible effort to excavate out a humongous amount of stone that can almost fill up two Olympic swimming pools. On top of that, the Urn Tomb was
excavated on a high cliff which means extra necessary work in order to remove the stone. It’s truly baffling how caves this huge were able to be excavated two millennia ago. The Urn Tomb also has highly uniformed parallel markings that are impossible for hand tools to achieve and clearly resemble machine marks. These fine markings cover the entire walls and ceilings. I would love to see close-up photos of the interior surfaces of other big caves, like the Monastery. Are these cave walls smooth
or do they show some kind of tool marks? It would be great to know. The size and scale of these Petra caves are astonishing. One cannot fully appreciate the scale of them until you see the structures being photographed with people as reference points. Even though there is not much decoration inside these caves, we can not overlook or underestimate the work put into excavating these enormous rectangular caves and the removal of an astronomical amount of rocks. It must have been a real feat. Where did the tons and tons of excavated rocks go? Did they get reused onsite or discarded somewhere else? Petra is a hilly area and the caves are located on various altitudes which means relocating rocks would be difficult and labor some. I read that Petra has hard yet brittle sandstone, thus its stone blocks are not suitable to make a long spanning beam; hence it’s a wonder that these gigantic caves were excavated without collapsing and ended up surviving after thousands of years.
The creators must have had advanced knowledge on construction, engineering and geology. Btw not all the caves are created equal. Some small caves show less sophisticated carving work. I think it’s possible that the caves in Petra were excavated by different groups of people over various periods of time, and served dissimilar purposes, which would explain the caves lack of uniformity. Now let’s check out some other Nabanaean cities and see what they look like. According to archeologists, after settling in Petra and making it their capital, the Nabanaeans subsequently expanded their territory to current day Syria, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Most other notable Nabataean cities, such as Avdat, Mampsis or Bosra, look nothing like the rock-cut city of Petra. For instance, the ancient Nabataean city Avdat, located in today’s Israel, is considered the most important city on the Incense Route after Petra between the 1st century BC and 7th century AD. The site is not short of rock cliffs though the city was not carved in rocks like Petra, but instead constructed with stone blocks like regular Roman towns. Carving rock caves and making stone buildings are two very distinct construction methods and require different skill sets and degrees of knowledge. In Petra, we can easily separate the original rock cut caves with the later Roman block and column construction. We can agree that Petra’s unique magnificence lays in its rock hewn structures; even its amphitheater was carved from rock. Typically, an archeological site can be recognized and
categorized by its architectural style. The ancient Greeks had their construction signatures, so did the Romans, Egyptians, Indians and Chinese etc. But the Nabataeans didn’t apply their signatures to most of their cities. Why was that? If Petra was the 1st major city created by the
Nabataeans, then judging by its massive, splendid cave creations, the Nabataeans must have had amazing rock carving capabilities and expertise. Then why are almost all of the other Nabataean cities devoid of the architectural characteristics which are shown over and over in Petra? It’s true that most cities in this region have changed hands multiple times throughout history and have been rebuilt. Still it’s surprising to see that other major Nabataeans cities share no true resemblance with Petra, the 1st and the capital city of the Nabataean kingdom. This diversion of building style probably had nothing to do with aesthetic preferences, because no one can deny Petra’s beauty. Then why did only one of the surviving Nabataean city,
Hegra, inherit the Petra style while the rest abandoned it? During my research, I realized that although Hegra has many caves looking very much like the Petra style, but if we examine them closely, we can tell that Hegra is in effect quite different from Petra. There are at least three major contrasts, which might put the real creators of Petra into question. Let me explain. Hegra (also known as Mada'in Saleh) is in the desert north of AlUla in Saudi Arabia, about 300 miles south of Petra. Hegra is an awe-inspiring archeological site in its own rights. Rocky outcrops and giant boulders are the common scene in this area, which is somewhat similar to Petra’s landscape. Hegra used to be a major city and a thriving trade hub of the Nabataean kingdom, just like Petra. There are over 100 beautifully carved stone caves that resemble the ones in Petra.
This site has been left practically undisturbed for almost 2,000 years and its well preserved rock carvings can offer us valuable insights about the Nabataeans and their rock cutting skills. Now, the differences between Hegra and Petra. 1st of all, most rock caves at Hegra are significantly smaller than the ones in Petra. Instead of carving caves in higher mountains like Petra, the Hegra caves were excavated on smaller boulder-like hills. The largest structure in Hegra is the lone palace, measures about 22 by 14 meters; while Petra's largest monument, the Monastery is more than twice the height and size. Most Hegra cave facades look like miniature versions of Petra’s. There are a few caves
in Hegra that might have grand comparable sized exteriors, but the interior spaces are usually small with many niches and not remotely close to the big and grand cave chambers in Petra. Also, large Petra caves have giant doors which are proportionally fitting for accompanying the massive interior spaces. The Hegra caves are much smaller with human-sized entrances and much smaller interior spaces. These small caves obviously would demand much less work in creating.
Another difference is that many Hegra caves have Nabataean inscriptions on the facade, while Petra caves do not have any such inscriptions. The oldest inscription in Hegra dates to 1 BC and the most recent 70 AD. These texts are carved on rock plaques on the facades, front and center above the entry doors. They state that these caves are tombs for important and wealthy people such as the governors. The majority of the Nabataean inscriptions document when the tombs were carved,
who and whose families they were created for, and sometimes include the stone masons’ names as well. They contain intimidating phrases to warn off tomb raiders. These inscriptions indicate that the Nabataeans carved these Hegra caves within the 1st century AD. As for the much older city Petra, although there is no such inscription or other dating evidence, the archeologists claim that the important Petra structures, such as the Treasury, might have been created around the same period.
Looking at close-up shots of the Hegra inscriptions and the cave facades, I noticed countless small chisel marks. Hegra cave facades look smooth from afar while detail photos reveal that the flat surfaces were achieved by masons carefully chipping away extra stone and leaving small tool marks. This method is still practiced today by traditional masons. These tool marks are consistent with the hand tools used in ancient times. Are there similar small strokes seen at Petra? I haven’t been to either Petra or Hegra so my judgment is based on detail photos that I managed to find online. Most Petra caves’ exteriors were badly damaged though some original facade work survived, such as at the Monastery, the Urn tomb and the Treasury.
These monuments are not only much bigger in scale, but also show superior carving quality. From photos, they appear to have smooth, almost polished stone facades, curved or round columns, highly accurate details and very sharp and precise adjoining lines. From this photo of the doorway at the Urn tomb, we can see the contrast between the interior with parallel fine markings and the smoother looking door frame. The Urn tomb already has nice finished interior walls but the exterior finish seems to be even more advanced.
Large facades in Petra are more difficult to create than the smaller ones in Hegra. Some Hegra facades show inferior and misaligned details. In general, Petra caves manifest a much finer and more sophisticated stone work, when compared with the smaller caves with crude tool marks at Hegra. Petra was the first capital of the kingdom. Hegra was built later and imitated the Petra style;
but Hegra caves are no match in either the scale or the work standard of the ones in Petra. I want to emphasize that the Hegra caves are the real tombs of Nabataean elites and should represent the true level of the Nabataean craftsmanship. However, why are these later carvings smaller and less sophisticated than the earlier ones? Even if these two sites were created around the same time, per archeologists’ dating suggestions, and both cities were the work of the Nabataeans, then how come we see dramatic differences in both the work scale and quality between the two? How did the Nabataeans achieve a much higher level of stone carving and finishing work in Petra while they couldn’t do so for the Nabataean elites’ resting places in Hegra? That’s strange and deserves further investigation.
Now, the third difference is that the caves in Hegra and Petra served different purposes. Hegra’s rock hewn caves were designated as tombs for the established families. There is an ancient town made of small stone blocks and mud-bricks in Hegra and it seems that the ancient Nabataean people lived there. This old town was the 2nd capital of the Nabataean kingdom and the Hegra rock cave cluster was a necropolis. But Petra is different. I know archeologists propose that most
of the Petra caves were also tombs. The big caves were tombs for kings and royals, and the smaller ones were for the commoners. I beg to differ. The fact is that Petra has a remarkable rock cut water collection and delivery system. The creators of Petra excavated and built dams, tunnels, cisterns and water conduits to control and collect annual flash floods. This extensive and ingenious water system proves that the city was created for the living not the dead. Water had made Petra an oasis in the desert and brought prosperity to the city. People lived,
worked, and traded in Petra’s caves, much like a modern city. Today, some local Bedouin people still live inside Petra, in caves just slightly off the tourist drag. So, Petra and Hegra are indeed different. Archeologists state that both cities were built by the Nabataeans. The terrains and landscape in these two regions
are fairly close. If the Nabataeans first created the rock hewn city of Petra, which means they were amazing proficient stone masons, then why didn’t they excavate their 2nd capital, Hegra, with the same advanced method? Why resided a rubble and mud brick town instead? Moreover, Hegra didn't have a complex water storing and delivery system like the one in Petra. Petra is a well designed rock city, a mind-bending oasis in the desert. Hegra’s rock caves are much smaller and are mostly elites’ tombs. The masonry quality of Hegra’s caves is visibly inferior compared to the grand and cavernous wonders in Petra, even though these royal tombs should have been the best work that the Nabataeans would have achieved. This possibly means the Nabataeans probably were not capable of creating the massive caves in Petra; therefore Petra might be the work of an earlier and more advanced culture that predated the Nabateans. Imagine the following: an unknown ancient civilization created Petra, a Xanadu, with all the superb monuments and a sophisticated water collection system. They lived
here for an extended period of time until some unfortunate events happened and they disappeared. A long time after, other groups of people came to the region, stumbled upon these incredible structures and made them into their homes. The Nabataeans came around the 4th century BC. They loved Petra, made it their capital and lived there for centuries. The Nabataeans admired the majestic rock facades and when they moved to another city Hegra they ordered their tombs to be done in the same adopted style. Petra, the marvelous stone city, likely has a backstory with an even longer history. It provided for its residents and still amazes us today with its splendor and glory. What do you think? If you have any insights,
please leave me a comment. If you like my video, please give me a thumbs up and subscribe. Don’t forget to hit the bell button so you will be notified when I upload new videos. If you want to support me – my Patreon link is below. I have a wide range of topics that I want to share with you. This is Curious Being, I’m Tina. Thanks for watching and see you next time.
2022-03-08 20:08
