The majesty and mystery of Petra

Author: By Phyllis Meras, Globe Correspondent

Date: SUNDAY, February 15, 1998

Page: M13

Section: Travel

I had always wanted to see Jordan's rose-red 2,000-year-old city of Petra. But Middle Eastern instability, I feared, might keep me from ever doing so except in the film ``Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.''

But, on a recent visit to Israel, I discovered it has become easy to take a side trip to Jordan. The border is less than an hour from Jerusalem, across the Allenby Bridge over the River Jordan. (In Jordan, the bridge is named for King Hussein.)

A peace accord has been in effect between the two countries since 1994. There is, however, still security rigamarole at the crossing. Luggage is taken away from travelers on the Israeli side, screened, and then put into the bus one takes to go into Jordan.

In Jordan, while they sorted things out, I was ushered into a waiting room and served flavored coffee in a gold-colored porcelain cup.

I did not resent the security on either side, though I was saddened by the need for it.

We drove first to Amman, the stunning white Jordanian capital, set, like Rome, on seven hills. En route, across the desert, we passed shepherds and tomato sellers by the roadside and trucks of produce from Israel. My driver, Mahomet, talked wistfully of how it had been 18 years since he had last been in Israel and seen the stone on Jerusalem's Temple Mount from which Mohammed is said to have ascended to Heaven. It would be so nice, he said, to be able to take his wife and children into Israel one day again and simply picnic with them under a tree.

Petra is about a three-hour drive from Amman, so we overnighted in the capital. In the morning, we set off across more endless expanse of desert, brightened only occasionally by clumps of grass and windswept pines. Now and then, too, we would pass a Bedouin village where women were tending black goats or sheep. Sometimes, under a canopy, watermelon would be for sale. ``Sahara,'' I learned from Mahomet, is the Arabic word for desert. Once, a miniature tornado whirled in the distance.

In a village among the hills just before Petra, we stopped at a souvenir shop where the 14-year-old brother of the owner fashioned a camel caravan of colored sand in a bottle for me. There are more than 20 shades of naturally colored sandstone in the rocks of Petra. Making fanciful designs by drawing with glue on the inside of a bottle, then pouring in sand in various shades that sticks to the glue is a favorite pastime.

When we reached Petra's Visitor's Center, there was discussion of whether I should go on foot, by camel, horseback, or in a carriage through the narrow, winding Siq. This is the dark passageway between rock walls 300 feet high that leads into the ancient hidden city itself. (Evocative Petra was the location for a final scene in the film, ``Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.'')

The decision made for me was in favor of a lurching horse-drawn carriage. Three-quarters of a mile later, I emerged into the opening where the city Lawrence had so much admired and I had so long wished to see was revealed.

Beyond camels, tourists, and neighing horses towered the 65-foot-high Khazneh -- Treasury -- with Corinthian columns, statues, and pediments hewn so long ago from the pink rock.

Though the first dwellers in the area were the cave-dwelling Horites and Edomites of the Old Testament, it is to the sixth-century BC Nabateans, originally a nomadic Arab people, that much of the look of present-day Petra is owed.

In settling down, the Nabateans at first grew grapes and olives and raised animals outside their hidden city. Then, because Petra lay on the trade route for silks and spices going from the Orient to the Middle East, Greece and Rome, the Nabateans made their city a resting place for caravans, and charged taxes, accordingly. Their fine architectural sense, it is said, is derived from the influence of the Greeks.

But there are touches of Egypt, too, in the Treasury. And it is the Treasury that has long leant mystery to Petra.

On its facade is what is believed to be a representation of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of the after life, and on its top an urn that the Bedouins thought contained the treasure of Egypt's pharaoh. Those who thought so have, over the years, tried innumerable times -- but unsuccessfully -- to break it. Indeed, bullet holes can be seen here and there on the Treasury facade.

My guide, Hussein, and I climbed to the grand main door. Inside is one large bare room with three small rooms extending from it. No one knows certainly what the building may have been used for, but all around it are tombs, suggesting that it, too, may have been one. Its name, however, comes from the ``treasure'' it supposedly housed.

The first certain tomb we saw was the wind- and water-worn Obelisk Tomb, with four obelisks -- a Nabatean burial symbol -- carved on its top. But there are many others -- royal tombs, a Roman soldier's tomb, and a series of structures with alcoves carved in their interiors. These are thought to have been feasting rooms used to honor the dead.

A Nabatean-built but Roman-perfected theater, a colonnaded street, a sacrificial spot, ancient terra-cotta water pipes, dwellings carved tier-on-tier into a cliff are also parts of Petra.

Viewing the ancient city -- sometimes pink, sometimes gray, sometimes black -- Hussein and I climbed from rocky ledge to ledge. The colors of Petra's cliffs are much affected by the light and shadows. In early morning or late afternoon, they are at their best.

We explored dark caves, their striated colored rock interiors darkened by fires of Bedouins who, over the years, had used them for dwellings.

We clambered up and down over miles of cliffs that first afternoon, leaving only as a golden sunset transmuted the rocks into pink gold.

The next morning, while my driver picked juniper berries to distill to settle an upset stomach, the guide and I climbed up a rocky path past weather-worn lions of gold-black-yellow sandstone. Our destination was the third-century BC Monastery -- Al Deir -- that, like the Treasury, looms over the landscape, and is cut from the rock with the same simple elegance.

It gets its name because there are crosses on one wall, and it is believed, in Byzantine times, it may have been a church. From an overlook opposite it, we looked down across shadowed mountains and a valley studded with pink oleanders and white mandillo flowers. In the distance, on jagged Mount Hor, a silvery dome marked the burial place of Aaron, the brother of Moses.

On the way down from the summit, my slacks tore on a rough rock and my guide handed me over to two Bedouin women for repairs. Keeping track of passersby who might fancy a cup of tea or wish to buy an ``authentic'' ancient artifact, the women listened to Saudi transistor music and kept shop on carpeted rocks.

Carefully shielding me with a blanket, they stitched up the slacks, grinning gold teeth at me as they did.

When the sewing was done, and we were on our way down into the valley again, I heard the full history of Petra from Hussein -- how the Queen of Sheba had once been a visitor and the Romans under Pompey had discovered and tried to control Petra. But the Nabatean king who ruled it had paid them to leave his city alone, and they largely had. The Romans did, however, add some of their own constructions to the site.

Later the Byzantines, the Greeks, and the Crusaders had found their way to rose-red Petra. But in the 13th century, it seemed to disappear from sight. It was forgotten by all but the few Bedouins who took shelter in its caves and tombs.

Then, in 1812, Johann Ludwig Burkhardt, a Swiss traveler and scholar of Arabic, learned from Bedouins who had befriended him of the existence of the hidden city. Saying that he wished to make a sacrifice at the tomb of the prophet Aaron, he managed to get himself led into the remarkable city.

It was late morning by the time Hussein and I found my driver again. He was sitting under a tree with his bag of juniper berries. Beside him was the sheik of the Bedouins of Petra seeking an automobile ride to the next village. The days of camels and horses are clearly over for all but tourists.

As we left, and I looked back, the rose-pink cliffs and pinnacles had darkened to a dusky pinkish-lavender.

At last I had seen T. E. Lawrence's ``brilliant Petra -- the most wonderful place in the world.'' I was not disappointed.

The better accommodations in Petra (and it is wise to stay overnight to see the city's many colors both in morning and late afternoon light) include the three-star Petra Forum Hotel and a new five-star Movenpick Hotel.

The best times for visiting Jordan are March through May and October through December.

Further information on travel to Jordan is available from the tourism department of the Embassy of Jordan, 3504 Interntional Drive NW, Washington, DC 20008; telephone 202-244-1451. To visit Jordan, a visa is required.

Jerash lies about 30 miles north of Amman, and annually, in July, it is the setting for an Art and Culture Festival opened by Jordan's American-born Queen Noor.

A guide took me sightseeing among its Roman and Byzantine monuments. Although Jerash's original settlers were soldiers from Alexander the Great's army, only a few small building stones remain from that period. About 63 BC, the settlement was captured by the Romans.

We walked the colonnaded Roman street -- the Cardo. In its heyday in the first and second centuries AD, the Cardo was a street lined with temples and baths and theaters, sections of which remain. Some 520 Corinthian and Ionic columns edged it then. Of these, after invasions and earthquakes, 72 still stand. Wheel ruts in the pavement give a sense of immediacy to the site. One can almost hear the rumbling of the chariot wheels.

The Cardo in ancient days was a walled city. The walls are gone now, but a number of gates still stand -- the Philadelphia Gate (Philadelphia was the ancient name for Amman), the Damascus Gate, the Jerusalem and the Baghdad gates. Each faces in the direction of the city that bears its name.

I viewed the Triumphal Arch built in honor of a visit by the Emperor Hadrian. Acanthus leaves decorate the column pedestals. I saw the oval-shaped Forum where shops once stood and went to the Temple of Artemis and the hilltop South Theater accommodating 3,000. I admired the mosaic floor of a sixth-century Byzantine church, constructed after the Christian takeover of Jerash.

I learned how extraordinary it is that anything remains of the ancient Roman city after invasions by Byzantines, Persians, Muslims, Crusaders, and Circasians, and after devastating earthquakes. Indeed, like Petra, for centuries no one knew that Jerash existed. In its case, it was buried in the sand from the 12th century until the early 19th, when a German traveler came upon it.

Also close to Amman is Madaba, where, in the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George, I viewed the mosaic that is believed to be the earliest surviving map of the Holy Land, made with 2.3 million mosaic pieces about AD 560. In the Church of the Apostles is other early mosaic work.

On windswept Mount Nebo, where the Byzantine Monastery of Syaga sits on its hilltop beyond the green-gray olive trees and white pines, I saw other early mosaics. Outside, I looked down onto Moses's Promised Land.