Travelling in Jordan: Petra. Little Petra. Part five

Obelisks on Petra’s hills

When most of the prophecies had been spoken, few of the Jews, not to mention the Edomites, believed in them. How can Petra fall – this impregnable capital, the city in the rocks, and the rock-city at the same time!? How can the affluent rivers of Edom dry up and its fertile lands become a desert!? How can a whole nation disappear from the face of the earth and how can a thousand-year-old royal dynasty stop!? No, all these prophecies looked more like some kind of a fairy tale. This is what the majority of the Edomites thought, until, at the end of the 6th century BC, the armies of one of the Arabian states – the kingdom of Dedan, came near Petra. The Dedanites were a tribe related to the Edomites, since their patriarch Dedan, the forefather of this nation, was a son of Jokshan, who in his turn was a son of Abraham and his third wife Keturah (Genesis 25:1-3).

Nabataea in the period between I BC and I AD

After a long siege, the Dedanites managed to seize the inaccessible capital of Edom. Then the Edomites had to learn in their own experience what it was like – to become slaves and victims, and what it felt like – to ascend the dreadful red steps to the altars of death. For on these very steps, by which the Edomites led people to death not so long ago, now they were led themselves. And on these very altars, where they sacrificed innocent people to their insatiable gods, now they were laid down themselves. The old Biblical law, according to which, “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” was truly fulfilled in their lives.

King Aretas IV. Silver drachma. Nabataean kingdom. From private collection

Less then one hundred years of Dedan’s rule over Petra passed by, and new vast hordes approached the city; this time – the tribes of the Nabataeans, who by the way were related through Abraham both to the Edomites and to the Dedanites. It is because the Edomites’ forefather Esau was married to his sisters Mahalath and Bashemath, daughters of Abraham’s son Ishmael, who were flesh sisters of Nebajoth – the forefather of the Nabataeans (Genesis 28:9; 36:3). After a long siege and assault, the Nabataeans captured the city and this time the Dedanites were offered on the terrible altars to appease the sun god. The city changed hands, but the terrifying spirit of this place, its terrible religion still haunted this mountainous capital. Originally, the Nabataeans were also ruled by their elders, but starting from 169 BC, the royal throne was set up among them. Based on the discovered documents, today we can reconstruct the Nabataean royal dynasty with a reasonable degree of accuracy: Aretas I (169-144); Malichus I (144-110); Aretas II (110-95); Obodas I (95-87); Rabble I (87-87); Aretas III (87-62); Obodas II (62-50); Malichus II (50-28); Obodas III (28-9); Aretas IV (9BC-40AD); Malichus III (40-70); Rabbel II (70-105).

Saint John the Baptist convicts Herod. Giovanni Fattori (1825-1908)

It is worthwhile to mention that a daughter of king Aretas IV was the first wife of the Jewish ruler Herod Antipas, who fell in love with the wife of his flesh brother Philip, Herodias – and she was, by the way, his niece, – and left Aretas’ daughter. The latter, well aware of the fact that she was in danger of imminent death, having been humiliated and hurt, fled to her father, and as a result, the war begins between Herod Antipas and his former father-in-law Aretas, in which the Jews suffered a bitter defeat. Yet another curse of this divorce was the influence that Herodias exerted on Herod Antipas, eventually forcing him to put John the Baptist to death.

King Herod the Great

Also notable was an unusual incestuous habit common among the royal Nabataean dynasty. The matter of the fact was that all members of the royal family had one wife and whoever entered the house first and put his rod as a sign according to the custom, that one had sex with her. Thus, all the children of different men were brothers through one mother. The only exception – and a grim one, was the permission to have sex with their own mother. Thus, human sacrifices and incest approved by this people’s religion led them not only to spiritual but also to physical degradation.

Emperor Trajan

In 106 AD, Roman legions of emperor Trajan approached the rocks of Petra. And again there was a long siege, long failures for the Romans, who started to curse the unassailable cliffs – the walls of this stronghold; and at last there came the long-awaited moment of victory, when the first legionaries broke into Petra and on the territories under its dominion created the province of Arabia. After that, the city was alternately under the control of the Byzantine Empire (from 395 till the 7th century AD), Arabian Caliphate (7th-12th centuries AD), Crusaders (12th century AD), the Ottoman empire (from the 14th century till 1922), and Jordan (since 1922). And all these years, tears and blood were pouring in this place, and it looked like as if everything had been really painted into red colour in this ancient capital. Starting from the 3rd century AD, Petra becomes virtually uninhabited, except for the rare times when it is used as a base by Crusaders, who built one of their castles here and called it Sela, or by gangs of bandits.

Steps leading to the altar

And lastly, the “final chord” so to say, of the horrible history of the people of Edom was, no doubt, the person of the notorious character in the Bible and in the world history king Herod “the Great” who through his father Antipater was an Edomite. Quite often he is called “the last Edomite.” Indeed, it seemed that everything negative that was in this ancient people – their cruelty, indulgence in lust, greed, and hypocrisy was embodied in the person of this gruesome leader. It was under his rule that Christ came into our world, and it was by the order of this king that infants were slaughtered in Bethlehem, among which, according to Herod’s expectation, Jesus had be also.

Little Petra

So if we look today at the physical map of these places, where the kingdom of Edom was once situated, we will see that no trace is left of its once affluent rivers and only the wadi (dried up riverbeds) tell us of the fact that there had been water one day. We will see that in place of the once fertile lands there are only dead sands now. The Idumean people really ceased to exist and the royal dynasties of Edom (the Idumeans) have gone into oblivion of history. The cities of this ancient kingdom are destroyed and covered with sand, and its haughty capital is populated today by jackals and eagle owls, who became the owners of its formerly stately palaces and temples.

Approximately ten kilometers away from Petra, there is one more gorge that is called Little Petra, or Siq al-Barid. According to some unconfirmed information, a little over five thousand tourists in total have visited Little Petra, because it has not been included yet in the main tourist routes. The admission to the Little Petra is free. The gates into the gorge are not closed for the night.

At one time, Little Petra served for travelling caravans as something like a way station, or caravanserai on the way to Petra; also the shortest road to the Palestinian border was through Little Petra.

The architectural ensemble of Little Petra consists of temples, altars, stairways, rooms, ritual buildings, and fragments of irrigation system hewn in the rocks. To the right of the main entrance into the gorge, there is a terrace of several steps with a tomb of ideal forms in it. To the left of it, a neat portico is carved in the rock on several columns. It looks very much like a temple, although neither altar, nor niche of any kind for some statue of a deity was found in it.

Further down into the gorge, there are three little halls carved in the rock. One of them has an amazing painting with frescoes of great skill that date back to the 1st century AD. The entire ceiling is covered with a refined floral ornament, in which one can see birds and people playing some music instruments. The walls are executed in the form of decorative painted squares. No other place in Petra has any preserved painting like this. This kind of painting – of such high quality, is rather more common for the Dionysian temples of the period of Alexander the Great. In such an austere place it looks absolutely unbelievable.

This material about Petra is taken from the article of Professor A. A. Oparin (Ukraine), Ancient Petra: Tombs. Altars. Sacrifices. published in magazine Review of the World Issues on April 3, 2013.