The Legacy of Solomon
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The Nabateans were a Semitic people who came from the Arabian Peninsula and founded the city of Petra in the 5th century BC. What was the relationship with the Nabateans and Israel? They were neighbours separated by the Dead Sea, the Nabateans were a trading people on the spice and silk route that ran from the Horn of Arabia to Egypt and the Mediterranean ports of ancient Palestine and Phoenicia.
O’Connelly was curious to see how this ancient civilization had fitted in with its neighbours and the Edomites who had controlled the trade routes from Arabia in the south to Damascus in the north before being pushed out by the Nabateans.
They hired a car in Amman and leaving early had visited the magnificently rich Roman city of Jerash in the north before making an about turn skirting the capital heading south. The road was good and after two or three hours they turned off to the town of Wadi Musa where they stopped at a small hotel. It was quiet, very quiet, the tourist trade was bad with the constant tensions in the Middle East and between Israel and the Palestinians to make matters worse Sheik Nasrallah had been making inflaming rhetoric in support of the Hezbollah militia in the south Lebanon.
Visits to the site commenced early so after dinner in the hotel restaurant they turned in ready for the visit at sunrise. It was barely day when they entered into the defile, called the Siq, on foot with the few other visitors present, at places it was just wide enough to walk or ride on horse back, to one side a water channel was cut into the rock.
The Nabateans, had been on of the many nomadic tribes that lived in the desert of North Saudi Arabia and South Jordan around 600BC living by their camels and from time to time raiding and plunder each other. They also offered protection for caravans that travelled from ancient Yemen, the home of the legendary Queen of Sheba who had visited the legendary King Solomon, bringing incense and treasures from India and China to the rest of the ancient world.
The Nabateans settled in Wadi Musa, coexisting with the Edomites. Petra was a natural mountain fortress, with only one very narrow passageway in through the mountains making it almost impregnable. During the Hellenistic period under the Seleucids and Ptolemies, the whole area flourished with increased trade and the establishment of new towns such as Philadelphia now Amman, and Gerasa now Jerash. The struggle between the Seleucids and Ptolemies for power allowed the Nabateans to gain control over the caravan routes between Arabia and Syria, in spire of the conflict between the Jewish Maccabeans and their Seleucid overlords.
In 63BC, the Nabateans were conquered by Pompey, but an independent Nabatea was allowed to serve as a buffer territory against the desert tribes. Under the Emperor Trajan, Petra and Nabatea became part of the Roman province known as Arabia Petraea with its capital at Petra, later Hadrian visited the city and named it after himself, Hadriane Petra. The city continued to flourish during the Roman period, with its buildings and monuments influenced by Roman architecture.
Although an earthquake in 363AD destroyed half of the city, Petra prospered into late antiquity, when it was the seat of a Byzantine bishopric, but an even more devastating earthquake in 551AD caused the ultimate decline of Petra. With the rise of Islam, Petra faded from history, though once a Crusader outpost, until it was re-discovered by the Swiss explorer Burckhardt in 1812, though almost two hundred years later only a small part of the city been investigated.
The city was literally carved from the red sandstone cliffs in the harsh desert of southern Jordan, with 3,000 temples, tombs and dwellings places and at its height was home to a population of 20,000 inhabitants
After half a kilometre the defile suddenly opened out and before them was the extraordinary sight of the Treasury. They then turned right down into the valley that opened out before them where the ruins of the ancient city lay surrounded by the red ochre hills on all sides. It was vast, monumental tombs were cut into the cliffs, there were amphitheatres, temples, market places and the Roman Cardo with its columns. The Nabateans had left behind them an extraordinary witness to the civilization built on commerce and trade, it contrasted to the little that was left of ancient Israel.
The returned to their hotel in the afternoon exhausted but more than satisfied with the beauties of ancient Petra, left wondering as many before them about the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, conscious of their brevity of their own and the threats the conflicts, so very close to them, bore.
The previous evening O’Connelly had prepared their visit to the Wadi Rum by reading the story of D.H.Lawrence and the description of the legendary desert where he had attacked the Istanbul-Baghdad-Red Sea train with the forces of the Arab tribes during World War I, in guerrilla operations in the desert.
The Wadi Rum lays in the Rift Valley an hour's drive from Petra or Aqaba, to the East of the Desert Highway, beneath the Rum Mountain one of the highest points in Jordan.
The vista of the Wadi Rum was one of the most beautiful he had ever seen, the majestic mountains and vertical cliffs rising out of the deep yellow and ochre sands in a panorama set against a deep blue sky. He promised himself he would return to explore the desert as he had seen other travellers leaving in specialised all terrain camping cars to explore the desert.
They arrived in Aqaba early that evening and stopped overnight at the most comfortable Movenpick hotel. Aqaba was a quiet town preferred by divers who had from all over the world to explore the marvels of the Red Sea. The next morning after having dropped of their rented car they took a taxi to the crossing point with Israel, they were alone. The formalities were uncomplicated; their only problem was the distance between the different bureaux for exit visas, passport controls and entry formalities into Israel. Once clear on the Israeli side they took a taxi to the Eilat Hilton.
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