76 MEMOIR OF BURCKHABDT. 



solid rock. The whole ground is strewn with heaps 

 of hewn stones, foundations of buildings, fragments 

 of pillars, and vestiges of paved streets, — the sad 

 memorials of departed greatness. The steep sides 

 of the rocky girdle that encloses the place is hol- 

 lowed out into grottos, and dwellings of various 

 dimensions, whose entrances are richly and often 

 fantastically decorated with every order of architec- 

 ture ; showing how the pride and labour of art has 

 vied with the rude sublimity of nature. The effect 

 of the scene is heightened by the appearance of 

 Mount Hor, towering above this city of sepulchres, 

 and perforated almost to the top with caverns and 

 excavations for the dead. 



The vast extent of these stupendous ruins corro- 

 borates the accounts given, both by sacred and pro- 

 fane waiters, of the kings of Petra, their courtly 

 splendour, and their ancient power. Great must 

 have been the opulence of a capital that could 

 dedicate such monuments to the memory of its 

 rulers. Their magnificence can only be explained by 

 the immense trade of which it was the common 

 centre, from the very dawn of civilisation ; for 

 although its ruins present a mixture of Greek and 

 Roman architecture coeval with the Caesars and 

 Antonines, many of them are of a much remoter 

 date j and there is indubitable evidence that Petra 

 was a flourishing emporium seventeen hundred 

 years before the Christian era. It was the point to 

 which all the trade of Northern Arabia originally 

 tended, and where the first merchants of the earth 



