Have you ever been to one of the seven ancient wonders of the world?  I have… Petra!

While visiting Israel, we decided to be like Indiana Jones and jump across the border into Jordan.  We went on a full day tour around Petra and saw many ancient ruins.  Our fabulous tour guide, Abdul gave us a lot of interesting information.

It all started with the Nabataeans…

The Nabataeans were a clever Arab tribe who originally came from the Arabian Peninsula.  They were merchants who went around the world with their camel caravans and gathered ideas from different empires for their own temples and buildings.  They discovered the sandstone was quite soft and started to carve simple tombs.  They followed the way other empires such as the Greeks, the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians built their temples and buildings.  They created Petra.

For most of our tour, we walked through the beautiful gorges and took some absolutely AMAZING photos!

The Nabataeans carved many tombs into the sandstone, some are simple and some are complex.  At the beginning of our tour, Abdul showed us a particularly interesting carving called the Obelisk tomb.  The top of the tomb was carved into the rock and was influenced by the Egyptians. The bottom half has pillars which is evidence of the Greek influence.

The Obelisk Tomb

The Royal Tombs

Some of the tombs we saw at the begining of our tour

Colourful tombs

More Royal tombs

Every 50 meters, the Nabataeans carved things into the sandstone such as statues of their gods .

One of the carvings was of the sun god with eyes, a nose, ears but no mouth.  They put eyes on because the god could see them.  They put a nose so that the god could smell the incense which was carrying the prayers of the people to him.  They put ears because the god could hear the people’s prayers.  The reason they did not put a mouth was because the god did not speak to them.

The Roman Theatre

The theatre might look like it was built by the Romans, but it was actually built by the Nabataeans in the first century AD.  It was carved into the rock instead of being built with big stone blocks like the one I saw in Ephesus.  Later on, when the Romans took over, they carried on building the theatre from where the Nabataeans left off.  Sadly, they found out that some tombs in the way, destroyed them and continued building.

Here comes our Indiana Jones Moment!

The Treasury

We arrived at the Treasury which everyone recognized instantly and was excited to see.

Here was our first view….

Then we saw the masterpiece….

The Treasury is, believe it or not, FULLY CARVED INTO THE CLIFF!  Yes, this spectacular, ancient building was fully carved into the rock.  It is 43 meters tall and 30 meters wide.  It was made a a tomb for an important Nabataen king and it is believed that it was later used as a temple.

There are many different carvings on the temple.  Starting at the top, on each side of the broken pediment there are two falcons to fight off the evil spirits.  Near the bottom, Zeus’ two sons, Castor and Pollux are there to protect the tombs.  An important question to ask is “how did the people get forty-three meters high to do these carvings?”  Well, if you see the indentations going up both sides of the façade, that is where they would put the scaffolding.

One of Zeus’ sons

Here are some of the things I mentioned

We had our Indiana Jones moment because in The Last Crusade, (the third movie) Indiana Jones goes to The Treasury in Petra to find the Holy Grail.  Unfortunately, we did not find the Holy Grail, but we were still there to see what he saw!

Added Colour

The Animals

What stood out in addition to all of the carvings and the tombs were the animals.  There were many people with donkeys, camels and horses all with beautiful coloured saddles on their backs.  It really added colour not only because of the saddles but because it made the experience more authentic.  There were no cars driving around everywhere or new paved streets.  If somebody needed a taxi they would have to ask the camel taxi driver!

Look at the colourful saddles

What a nice looking donkey

A close up

The Sand Art

Another thing that stood out for me was the sand art.  The sand art is made out of coloured sand to make pictures of the desert and the camels inside of a glass bottle.  The Bedouin artists use a funnel with a long tube to make the right shapes of the camels.  For Christmas, my parents bought Mikhaila and I some sand art with our names written inside.

Wow!

Looks amazing!

Even better!

Over all Petra was AMAZING!!!!!!  I really liked walking around and exploring the ruins of this ancient civilization.  I really recommend going to Petra to see all of the tombs and the great detail carved in them.  Now I understand why it is an ancient wonder of the world.