Petra: Too Big for a Single Post

After getting up at the ungodly hour of 4am and hiking by flashlight through the still dark canyons, I'd successfully sneaked into Petra.  The first attraction was the Siq, a narrow, winding, steep walled canyon that was the formal entrance to Petra.  The Siq opens up dramatically right in front of the Treasury, a sight made familiar by the Indiana Jones film (see my earlier post).

After the Siq and the Treasury comes the Storefront, so called because the tombs are so neatly lined up one after another that they resemble a block of stores.

Even taking into account that those three are diminutive Asian women, those are still gigantic tombs.

Note the Babylonian/Assyrian influence in the stepped pyramid design at the top.

Everywhere you look there are tombs both grand and plain.

The day before I was somewhere up above here, on the wrong side of these cliffs.  No wonder I couldn't find my way down.

Modern reconstructions in front of the ancient amphitheater.

Columns that no longer hold up buildings can still hold up tourists.

The tomb-riddled cliffs above the amphitheater.

This one is called the Courthouse, as I recall, due to the belief that the arched areas underneath were used as prisons.

A souvenir seller seeks shelter from the intermittent rain.

The courthouse was re-used in later centuries as a church.

Mmm.. columnar.

It's big inside.

And the flat transverse cut of the ceiling reveals stunning patterns in the solid rock.

Oh, oh, one of my favorites styles of photograph: looking out a hole/window/whatever.

A higher, more expansive view of the amphitheater.  I couldn't decide which shot I preferred..

..so you get both.

Looking back toward the Storefront, the site beginning to fill up.

It's amazing how well preserved many of the facades are.

Portions look like the masons could have put down their tools the day before.

Take a moment and try to imagine this bad boy when it was new, with all of its details complete and every line ruler straight.  Wow.

There's a restored Nabotean path that runs to a marvelous lookout above The Treasury.  Those are modern stairs beyond, but this 3m wide, 10m long cut through solid rock is all Nabotean.

The cross hatched chisel marks are very distinctive.

Original Nabotean stairs.

As near as I can figure, this is the path I saw but couldn't reach the previous afternoon.  I'm pretty sure I was considering climbing down the crevice on the left, the darker one with plants growing in it.  I'm glad I didn't.

High above the plain which contained the city of Petra itself.  The city's main thoroughfare followed the stream bed in the center.

One last look at the amphitheater and surrounds.

Oh, is that what I think it is?

It is.

I'm not normally a fan of the "Me in front of.." shot, but sometimes it's impossible to resist.

This man is on the wrong side of the Siq, nonchalantly fixing himself some tea.  Good for him.

It's a stunningly rugged landscape.  Or maybe ruggedly stunning.  Probably both.

This woman wanted to know if I had seen her goat.  I had not.

One of the most incredible things about the areas surrounding Petra proper is how tiny remnants of the Naboteans quietly abound.  Note here the niches carved in the face of the boulder.

The top side of the gorge I followed down to the Siq the night before.  As it turns out, I passed only 50 meters from the path down, but missed it.

After spending a good 20 minutes negotiating the price of some 'ancient' coins (which I didn't end up buying), the vendors invited me to lunch and tea.  I just don't get the Bedouin mindset: the coins dropped well over 50% in price before I decided against buying them (but were probably still too costly), yet they wouldn't accept even a token payment for the food or tea.

I'm pretty sure that ain't a cigarette she's smoking.

Another look back.

Petra lasted long enough to convert to Christianity.  This is the portico of the recently unearthed Byzantine church.

My photos really don't do these mosaics justice.

They are completely original, I believe, the church having been suddenly abandoned following a devastating fire.

Here, now this is a good shot. How did Gauis Caecilius do that?

Who's that casting such a devilishly handsome silhouette?

One of the large public spaces of Petra the city.  To be honest, I don't even remember what it is.  Petra is so big, I was pretty overwhelmed by this point.

Amidst a field of rubble, a fragment of an angel.

I want you to focus and hold this image in your mind.  This is a speculative architectural cutaway of the Qadr al-Bint temple complex, Petra's oldest and most venerable.  Hold it, hoooooold it..

..this is what it looks like now.  Not so much, eh?  Clearly, freestanding isn't the way to go if you're building for the ages.

The Monastery, so called because the Byzantines re-used it as a chapel.  That's me in front there.  It's big.

It might have looked something like this when new.

From the Monastery, it's a little more than an hour walk/jog down to the valley floor, back along the main thoroughfare, back up the Siq and out the front gate.  I know because I sure as hell didn't want to miss the 5pm shuttle back up to the hostel.  It had been one helluva day: up at 4am to hike an hour and a half through the pre-dawn canyons into the site, hiding while waiting for the real tourists to start arriving and then hiking all over hell and gone taking pictures of everything.

But I hadn't paid one red cent (or piaster or dinar) to get in, and damn did that feel good.