Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Petra

This weekend, my family and I visited the museum to see an exhibit of "Petra, The Lost City of Stone". I had not heard of Petra before. Have you?

Claimed to be the eighth wonder of the world, Petra is a city carved out of the sandstone mountains of the Jordan desert by the Nabataeans in the 2nd century B.C. Access to this city is through a narrow split in the rock, 10-20 feet wide. Almost through this passage way, facades of tombs loom before you; the Greek and Roman influence surrounds you. Sculptures of the Nabataean gods and goddesses adorn the city's temples, resembling Zeus and Aphrodite. This sudden grandeur in the middle of the Arabian desert surprises.

I stood before the fragments of Petra, incredulous that I was able to glimpse a piece of the story.

Visit Petra


10 comments:

won tong said...

FABULOUS EXPERIENCE ...WOW..AND YES I'VE HEARD OF IT..

-tnchick- said...

I have heard of it, never been there. So very neat. The photo is beautiful.

Anonymous said...

No, never heard of it but interesting to find out about.

J. Andrew Lockhart said...

I've always wanted to go there --

mompoet said...

What a place that must be. Sometimes the world seems very small, sometimes so big that we can never know it really.
mp

Anonymous said...

No, I had never heard of Petra. Thanks for the tip. Wow.
It never ceases to amaze me...all the ancient wonders and mysteries. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking we had to have been seeded from another race from another place.

Carol said...

I hope you will check the exhibit out if it comes to your home town!
I failed to mention that Indiana Jones'
Last Crusade
was filmed there.

Reuben said...

Yes! Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade it was. If I'm not wrong I've seen it in other films too, perhaps the end-of-the-world-natural-diaster kind of movie. I think Petra means rock, and I know there's even an old Christian rock band with that name.

Stephen Cummings said...

Yes, it was in Last Crusade but, they didn't refer to it as Petra in the film. That otherwise completely historically accurate film.

Carol said...

Reuben and Stephen,
I will have to watch that movie again.