Petra, One of the Most Spectacular Archaeological Sites in the World

Nestled in the heart of the Jordanian desert, Petra is one of the most spectacular archaeological sites in the world. Founded by the Nabataeans in the sixth century BC, this rock-hewn city prospered thanks to the trade in incense, spices, and luxury goods. In this hour-long video, discover its iconic monuments: the Khazneh (the Treasury), the Deir (the Monastery), the royal tombs, theaters, temples, and an ingenious hydraulic system over 2,000 years old. Rediscovered in 1812 by Swiss explorer Jean-Louis Burckhardt, Petra still fascinates today with its beauty, mystery, and millennia-old history. Drawing on Greek, Roman, and Arab influences, this World Heritage treasure tells us about the incredible expertise of a forgotten people.

Editor’s Note: The transcript that follows was automatically generated and lightly edited, so please be aware there could be typos or other small errors. The Stream is working toward a transcription service that does fast, accurate, and reliable work; thank you in advance for your patience!

00:00:59
In the Middle East, Jordan is a land steeped in history. The country is full of archaeological treasures. The most beautiful is undoubtedly the site of Petra. The site, created in Antiquity, was then occupied in the 6th century BC, by the Nabataeans, an Arab people who, by settling here, will make it prosper by trading with the caravans transporting incense, spices and other luxury goods between Egypt, Syria, Arabia and the Mediterranean. Around the 8th century, the modification of trade routes

00:01:43
and earthquakes lead to the gradual abandonment of the city by its inhabitants. Forgotten, the site is rediscovered by Swiss explorer Jean-Louis Burckhardt in 1812. We are in front of the first monument in Petra which can be seen after entering the site. These are the Djinn blocks or the reservoirs. At the entrance to the site, the Djinn, which in Arabic means spirits. Some believe they were tombs. Perhaps they were baetyls. Betyle refers to Beth in Semitic and Arabic languages, which means the House of God or God.

00:02:28
These are gods in the form of statues among the Greeks and Romans. Perhaps they were reused later to keep the waters here, especially since there are channels at the top that are hollow. Further on, in the necropolis of Gaia, the obelisk tomb is a striking example foreign influences on the city of Petra. Mixing Egyptian and Greek styles, This 1st-century monument belongs to the classical period of Nabataean architecture. On the lower level, the banquet hall was intended to honor the dead. At the summit, the obelisks represent them.

00:03:33
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Orientalist movement was sweeping Europe. How can you not be fascinated and attracted by this narrow passage? covered in graffiti which extend for more than a kilometer into the mountain. The Nabataeans had adopted the gods and techniques of the Greco-Roman world. They had created an aqueduct and reservoir system dug into the rock which brought water to the heart of the city. Here you can see part of the hydraulic system. It’s the dam and the dark tunnel

00:04:03
which was covered with earth until the 1960s, which allowed to divert the Wadi Musa watercourse in case of flooding around the mountain, the Khubtha. The water then returns to Wadi Musa, in the center of Petra. It’s a huge amount of work. The tunnel is about 80 meters long, and it’s obviously a system that still works very well. The city is entered through the Siq. The Siq is the parade that leads you into the city. At the bottom of the Siq, we also have the door. At the entrance, there was a monumental arch

00:04:54
which collapsed in 1895 and which was admired of all travelers in the 19th century. The Siq is originally a river, it is the bed of Wadi Musa which continues and which has undoubtedly contributed to hollowing out the rock. Thousands of years ago, a river flowed whose course was diverted to allow development downstream of the city. It was paved. In short, it was a big street. This remote region of Jordan was settled in the 4th century BC by a decidedly ingenious people. The further you advance into the Siq, the narrower the parade becomes

00:06:06
as a representation of an initiatory quest. For tourists, this is the main access route. But the people who work in the center of Petra know well that the Siq is only a side access route and it was at the same time more or less a processional way, an access route that was a route for religious worshippers, since you saw that it is punctuated with open-air sanctuaries and niches housing idols sometimes figurative, sometimes geometric. Further into the Siq after the baetyls, a small temple in a sandstone clearing,

00:07:09
also cut from the mass. This is dedicated to Dushara, the supreme god of the Nabataeans. Here, we make the procession around the betyl before going around the outward or return journey. The Siq acts as a veritable umbilical cord for the city of Petra. He channeled the flow of people, trade and faith, the obligatory passage of development and perhaps also its limits. You may have seen that on the walls of the parade, channels had been dug which supported a terracotta pipe bringing water to the center of Petra.

00:08:28
It was an adjustment probably made during the Nabataean era, perhaps at the turn of our era according to some of our colleagues, maybe a little later, in several stages probably, but which transformed the Siq into an important entry point. Finally, behind two half-open sandstone curtains, one of the most beautiful spectacles in the world appears, the Khazneh, which means treasure. The monument, which is only a luminous crack, only gradually reveals itself as a whole. The Khazneh is said to be the tomb of the Nabataean king Aretas IV,

00:09:34
who lived in the 1st century BC. It was dug out of the rock and has a Hellenistic-style facade which measures 40 meters high and 28 meters wide. Recently, it served as a natural setting for Steven Spielberg’s film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This monument was the monument that everyone knows. When we talk about Petra, everyone think of the Pharaoh’s treasure since that’s the Arabic name that the inhabitants of Petra gave him a long time ago. We don’t know exactly its date or its function.

00:10:16
As with almost everything in Petra, inscriptions are lacking. From the beginning, it was thought that it was linked to royal power, that it was probably a tomb or a funerary building, a funerary temple for one of the kings of Petra, one of the Nabataean kings or a Nabataean queen, or a king and a queen. The Khazneh is actually a first floor. The way we see it today is quite misleading. In reality, it towers five or six meters the actual ground of the square which stretches out in front. It was accessible by a large staircase that started approximately

00:11:07
from the middle of the square and whose construction blocked the tombs we were talking about earlier, the tombs of the first state. This facade, which dates from the end of the 1st century BC, is well preserved, as it is protected by its sandstone cliffs. It is also said that according to legend, a Pharaoh passed through Petra and placed his treasure in the urn overlooking the facade. On the other hand, from the beginning of the 19th century, greatly interested commentators because of the architecture,

00:11:42
from the top of the building carved into the rock, which closely resembles the architectural decor numerous paintings from Pompeii with the central rotunda and the two side elements with the split pediments. You see that there is a theme there, first of all, probably royal, of power, with eagles which were carved at the top, whose heads have disappeared. The snag of earth in the middle was Isis’s headdress, what is called the basileion. The most frequently accepted hypothesis was that this facade dated from the end of the Ptolemaic period,

00:12:28
in the 1st century BC, to be very vague. Currently, it seems that we have to postpone it for a few decades, but it could very well date from the 1st century AD. On either side of the vestibule, we have two reliefs each representing a man next to his horse, probably the Dioscuri Castor and Pollux. We have a pediment also decorated with plant scrolls. Carved in stone, Nabataean gods and goddesses, Greek, Egyptian, and Assyrian mythological figures. The Nabataeans are a people most likely of Arab origin,

00:13:41
most likely came from the Arabian Peninsula, but we don’t know exactly if it’s from the south or the east from the peninsula or the northwest, in a fixed period between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. They are attested in the south of present-day Jordan, at the end of the 4th century BC, at the time when a successor of Alexander, Antigone attacks the Nabataeans. They are attested by Greek historians much later. It seems that the Nabataeans became rich as caravaners and traders. They traded in spices, precious and expensive products

00:14:35
came from southern Arabia by caravan. It also seems that at a certain time, they had, dominated the traffic, the maritime trade of the Red Sea. They were apparently an extremely active people who managed to enrich himself significantly, probably in the Hellenistic period. They had troops that were apparently highly valued by other powers, since, as is often the case, at that time, they hired them, so they detached troop corps to serve other sovereigns, and on the other hand, they played an important role

00:15:46
in the diplomatic game, at a time when the Hellenistic powers were crumbling and the Romans are establishing themselves in the region. They are true sovereigns entirely comparable to other sovereigns of the late initiatory period or from the Augustan era. It is not known if there is a decline. We know that the center of gravity of the kingdom moved north and it was even said that the last king Rabbel II had made his capital or its second capital, Bosra, which is an important city in southern Syria.

00:16:34
Which would partly explain why the Romans then, placed the capital of the province of Arabia in Bosra. When working in Petra, most of the major monuments from the city center and a large part of the city, were organized in an extremely thoughtful and serious manner at this time, towards the end of the 1st century BC, under Obodas III and Aretas IV and throughout the 1st century AD. It doesn’t feel like a city in decline at all. On the contrary, it’s a city in full development. The Roman period would have been significant for Petra

00:17:42
a period of decline. This is partly true, because the administrative importance and Petra’s policy seems to have narrowed for the benefit of Bosra or other towns further north. The excavations that are currently being carried out in the city, seem to demonstrate that in the Roman period, there were still important monumental programs and a large segment of the population was very prosperous. Our Swiss colleagues, for example, have searched for several decades a series of houses on the hill of Zantour

00:18:54
which dominates the city center. These are very beautiful houses, which were built during the Nabataean era, but which continued to be occupied during the Roman period. Behind the Khazneh, a short defile less narrow than the Siq leads to the lower town where the Alley of Facades and the Necropolis are located. Along the street of facades, very imposing troglodyte temples follow one another one after the other because the inhabitants flaunt their wealth by having tombs built there and imposing monuments.

00:20:24
In this necropolis of nearly 800 tombs in the middle of the desert, the Bedouins are at home, moving as they please, because the desert belongs to no one else. Being the majority of the inhabitants of this region when Jordan was created in 1921, they only represented 5 to 10% of the country’s population. Life for these nomads is difficult. and herding a herd is no longer enough for their survival. They join the desert patrols or serve as guides to travelers. The site attracts so many tourists that there was talk of evicting them.

00:20:57
to settle them in modern, permanent dwellings. In vain, because it’s not so easy to put an end to an ancestral way of life. As we continue there, we can see the Nabataean theater on the left. It’s like the thirds, built by the Nabataeans. Annexed in 106 AD by Emperor Trajan, Petra retains many traces of the Roman conquest and fashion, like the theater, which is fairly well preserved. Built in the 1st century and carved into the rock, It could accommodate 5,000 people. Several pre-existing caves and tombs

00:21:38
were destroyed for the construction of this work. The cavities visible on the back wall are a final testament to this. Here, there are tombs on both sides. To the left over there are tombs for normal inhabitants, the less wealthy, but on the right, it’s for the rich and privileged. That’s why they’re called the royal tombs. Why do they have a facade called royal tombs? Here again, we have no registrations, so we have absolutely no idea whose these superb facades are, these tombs or monuments were intended.

00:22:28
It is indeed possible if we want to play the prediction game, to find them a relative chronology. We have some ideas about the facades that have been dug out. before others and can be attributed to great figures from the 1st century BC and AD, to certain kings or queens or members of the royal family. This is purely hypothetical. These facades stand out from the countless funerary monuments of Petra. There are several hundred of them over more than a thousand rock chambers. They are distinguished by their architecture.

00:23:50
In particular, there is the tomb called the Corinthian tomb, which, like Khazneh and Deir, is adorned with a rotunda at the summit. The monument located at the other end of Petra is called the Deir, hence the monastery. These are three facades which present a higher order organized around a rotunda, which is relatively rare here, and which must have been particularly sumptuous. A little further to the right, it’s the largest rock facade of Petra with the Deir, This is the tomb called the palace tomb

00:24:38
or the multi-story tomb which had, among other features, that of being partially built. The superstructures were built of masonry, These are blocks that have been added and are also stuccoed. There’s a stucco coating, so there are large pieces remaining on the facade. The one behind me is the tomb called the urn tomb, and also called the Cathedral because in 446 AD, the inscription is still very clear at the bottom, an inscription painted in red. It was converted into a church. The Urn Tomb was originally a large tomb

00:25:59
including some vaults and pits are still visible on the ground. Before that, there were apses at the back and on the sides. Subsequently, during the transformation into a church, These alcoves have been transformed into a sort of apse to represent the back or apse of the church. As you can see, there was a large terrace lined with porticoes which are carved into the rock and which advanced on vaulted masonry which are currently disemboweled since at least the 19th century, which give it a very particular appearance.

00:27:22
This tomb was subsequently used, it seems, or rather, the crevices in the rock, on the tomb were used as a dungeon, as it is traditionally called here prison or court. For once, We have a registration, a written indication. An inscription was found in this area mentioning a Nabataean minister who was named *Oneshouk*, which is placed in the 1st century after Jesus Christ, probably around the 70s, and who seems to have had his tomb in the area. The inscription is interesting because it mentions of the tomb’s dependencies and shows that it was not

00:28:29
of a simple tomb, but of an entire funerary complex comprising a garden of porticoes, very often, of course, a cistern. We have also already seen dining rooms, tricliniums, banquette rooms which were probably used for family gatherings related to the celebration of the deceased. The tombs were something extremely important in water distribution in particular. There is a whole network of water distribution pipes, water harvesting and distribution. There are also canals. The piping system is still present on all facades.

00:29:22
This is because the Nabataeans were experts in the field of hydraulics, because they enjoyed every drop of water. This is why we have many cisterns and canals. So far, 280 cisterns have been discovered here in Petra. Here, the funerary monuments and their traces civilizations survive, no matter how great they may be. At the time of Christ, Petra was at its height and wealth. attracts admiration, but also covetousness. In the 1st century AD, Rome, perceiving the economic power growing Nabataeans as a threat,

00:29:57
develops maritime trade routes and condemns Petra’s economic activity by diverting the caravan route to Palmyra in Lebanon. What made Petra famous and rich will also cause its slow but inevitable fall. From here you can have a view of the lower town. After the theater, the main street continues which was paved by the Romans later during the Roman era. At the bottom of the lower town you can see a large cobbled section until today by the Romans. A nymphaeum, baths, squares, a little Rome was hidden here,

00:30:38
in this lunar landscape. The discovery of the site, or rather its rediscovery, by Westerners, We must not forget that the site has always been inhabited and that the inhabitants of the region knew him. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it did not necessarily hold to see strangers entering their homes. Apparently there were legends that persisted for a very long time, according to which all these ancient monuments concealed treasures that the locals did not want to see disappear. He was a Swiss explorer who had been trained in England,

00:31:34
Jean-Louis Burckhardt, born in Basel, who first visited the site in 1812. He traveled the site posing as a follower of Haroun, a pilgrim who was going to sacrifice a goat to the prophet Haroun whose tomb is believed to be located on the mountain overlooking Petra to the south. He was going from Syria to Egypt, and he was afraid of being taken for a spy. At the time, the situation was tense and he didn’t want to fall into the hands of the Ottoman military authorities who were responsible for the region.

00:32:32
He only made a quick trip back and forth across the city to the foot of Djebel Haroun. His guide was suspicious of him and he was barely able to do anything an extremely rough sketch from the Khazneh treasury and cross the city then take the path that hikers take today towards Mount Haroun. He was struck by the monuments, especially by the Qasr el-Bint located behind us. Arriving in Egypt, he did some research and was also able to discuss with members of the European society which was established in Cairo

00:33:24
and find references that allowed him to recognize Petra in its ruins. Unfortunately, his travel relationship was not published until after his death. He died a few years later, but it served subsequent explorers. David Roberts was a Scottish painter who came here. He traveled throughout the Middle East. He was probably in contact with his predecessors. At that point, a whole series of shots took place extremely interesting. For us, these are documents for archaeologists. These are interesting documents.

00:34:34
The original drawings, when you manage to get your hands on them, obviously provide invaluable information on the actual state of the monuments at that time. He made a whole series of drawings which were later used to engravings, some of which were in color. David Roberts is one of the first whose views have been published in color. The Petra engravings were highly sought after by the European and American public. Then there was a whole phase of tourist or scholarly travel towards the end of the 19th century,

00:35:20
more strictly archaeological and epigraphic expeditions, many epigraphic expeditions for the study Nabataean inscriptions in particular. The actual excavation phase began when Jordan became an independent state after the First World War. But there had already been archeological surveys and limited excavations even during the First World War. From the 1920s onwards, these were essentially the British and the Americans later, who were busy exploring Petra, in particular to uncover a whole collection of major monuments.

00:36:15
We have a little idea of it behind us, although most have been completely cleared in recent years. They also excavated tombs. Many tombs, rock monuments were explored at that time. Faced with the wealth of discovery, the site of Petra is registered on December 6, 1985 on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The surrounding area has been a national archaeological park since 1993. In the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, exploration of the city center has intensified, especially along the paved road which forms its main axis.

00:37:05
The very large building located behind me, which is traditionally called the great temple, but which is undoubtedly a civic complex, has been explored, excavated and restored as you can see by a team from Brown University in the United States, who continues to work there. On our side, the French team took over in 1999 a work that had already been started in the 1980s on the great temple called Qasr el-Bint and on its sacred enclosure, what we call a temenos, focusing essentially on the enclosure, on the monuments which are in front of the temple.

00:38:02
Although insidious and patient, humidity threatens the extraordinary beauty of the monuments. Salt-laden infiltrations rise by capillary action in the sculpted cliffs, endangering the integrity of the site. The Roman part of the lower town is very ruined, because it is built of stone, It suffered the great earthquake of 363 AD. Most of the temples are concentrated at the bottom of the lower town. For example, there’s the building opposite us. This is the temple of Qasr el-Bint, the main temple which was dedicated to Dushara, the supreme god among the Nabataeans.

00:38:37
This monument is unique because it is the only one which is completely built in Petra and it exists today thanks to an anti-seismic technique, the wooden friezes. On the wall, there are three wooden friezes. That’s why it remains so today. Discovered only in 1974, the castle of the Pharaoh’s daughter is the only building in Petra not to have been carved into the rock. The walls still standing are a monumental altar dedicated to Al-‘Uzzā, the Nabataean Aphrodite. Mentioned in the Quran, Uzza was a pre-Islamic Arab goddess of fertility,

00:39:09
one of the three most revered deities in Mecca. Here, in the lower town, where most public monuments are concentrated, It was the Acropolis of the city of Petra. Even if it’s difficult to get a clear idea of the city that several earthquakes have caused serious damage, Petra is the most visited site in Jordan. with nearly 400,000 visitors per year. Let’s go back to the year 330. Petra is part of the Catholic Byzantine Empire and the Empire encourages the spread of the Christian faith there by building places of worship in the lower town.

00:39:57
A cathedral and three other churches will be discovered during the excavations. but a violent earthquake struck Petra on May 19, 363, damaging monuments including the theater, churches, and aqueducts. The city, already weakened since Roman domination by the reduction of its commercial activities, is not rebuilt and is slowly emptying of its inhabitants. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, will say that almost half of the city was destroyed when the earthquake struck at the third hour, and especially at the ninth hour of the night.

00:40:30
Describing the earthquake and its powerful aftershock. At the bottom of the lower town, are the temples. We have four temples and we also have the cathedrals. It is a Byzantine church from the 5th and 6th centuries, discovered, excavated and restored by our colleagues of the American Center in Amman in the 1990s. It includes the courtyard where we are and visibly in all buildings and especially for marquees Inside the church, many blocks were reused dating from the Nabataean or Roman period. There was on this hill a whole series of monuments,

00:41:30
large buildings, probably large monuments who provided these reuses. She had a baptistery behind here, which is very interesting, a pretty baptistery whose restoration is planned, a new restoration. You see that the peristyle courtyard, the atrium, is centered around a large bottle-shaped cistern, which is quite characteristic of mid-slope cisterns quite numerous in Petra, and which today collect a lot of water with the rain. Furthermore, this church was decorated in its second state, mainly that of the 6th century, of mosaic pavements

00:42:23
in the side aisles, which are therefore very well preserved. These mosaics are much less fine than those found in Madaba. They are closer to mosaics from the same period, from Palestine, from Gaza in particular, but they are quite interesting. On one side, they show us a series of animals from creation, some rather unusual animals that we probably don’t see often here, like giraffes in particular. On the other side, a series of characters which symbolize the central theme, the wisdom of God who governs the world and time.

00:43:23
We see the representations of the seasons in a mythological manner, with four busts of characters representing spring, summer, autumn and winter. The excavations you see below here, which we overlook, are those of the French mission around Qasr el-Bint which is part of the Petra Wadi Rum mission, that I have the pleasure, the honor and the responsibility of leading. They continued across this entire sector which was therefore part of the ancient paved esplanade corresponding to this great temple, the Qasr el-Bint,

00:44:22
which means the castle of the Pharaoh’s daughter, by reference to a local legend telling that the Pharaoh, legendary king of Petra, is said to have promised his daughter’s hand to anyone who would bring water to Petra. What’s interesting is that under the slabs, we have unearthed the remains of older houses than the Nabataean temple which probably dates back in the 3rd or 2nd century BC, which are not at all in the axis that you see here, which is a north-south axis, and which seem to indicate that this city center in the heart of the city of Petra,

00:45:23
was already inhabited probably by Nabataeans, at least at that time. This is one of the major contributions of the mission in recent years. Here in the background, on the Nabataean wall, the apse monument was built whose remains we see, which housed the statues of two emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. We have confirmation from the archaeology of the texts which constitute monumental inscriptions elsewhere, which were discovered here. The pilgrimage to Petra continues and that’s after 800 steps

00:46:25
carved into the rock, which punctuate the path on the mountainside we reach Deir, also called the monastery, after a long climb. We are here opposite the Deir or the monastery. It’s a tomb like the royal tombs. It looks a bit like the treasure of Khazneh, the most decorated and best-preserved facade. But it’s less decorated here, but a little bigger. 45 meters wide by 50 meters high, Deir is the second most imposing monument in Petra. Deir takes its name from the Byzantine era around the 4th century,

00:47:40
when it was used as a monastery by the first Christians. Carved from yellow sandstone, this ancient tomb resembles the Khazneh, the flagship monument at the entrance to Petra. Although its decoration is much more sober. The urn that dominates it alone measures ten meters high. Before leaving Petra, you must take the time to dream one last time to the glory of this empire which, at its peak, extended from Syria to the north, to the Negev Plateau to the south, and over a large part from the Egyptian Sinai and Arabia.

00:48:38
It would be easy to imagine yourself in the United States along the way. for Monument Valley. Only here, the desert is an improbable color, a pink that owes nothing to effects of a blazing sunset or the fireworks of a Technicolor film. It is one of the most beautiful deserts in the world, different from the vast expanses of the Sahara.