Vol. XVIII, No. 5 WASHINGTON 



May, 1907 



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THE ROCK CITY OF PETRA^ 



By Franklin E. Hoskins, D. D., of Beirut, Syria 



The first of a series of several articles describing rock-heicn edifices of antiquity 



THE highlands east of the Jordan 

 River are strewn with ruins 

 marking the rise and fall of 

 successive civilizations — Semitic, Greek, 

 Roman, Christian, Mohammedan, and 

 Crusader. These ruins have been pre- 

 served for the modern explorer by the 

 tides of nomadic life, which have swept 

 up from the Arabian desert ; but at the 

 southern end of this no-man's land, deep 

 in the mountains of Edom, lies one of 

 the strangest, most beautiful, and most 

 enchanting spots upon this earth — the 

 Rock City of Petra. Its story carries us 

 back to the dawn of human history. 

 When Esau parted in anger from Jacob 

 he went into Edom, then called Mount 

 Seir, and after dispossessing the Horites 

 became the progenitor of the Edomites, 

 who remained the enemies of the children 

 of Israel for a thousand years. These 

 Edomites had princes, or kings, ruling 

 in the Rock City while the children of 

 Israel were still in Egyptian bondage. 

 Some of the darkest maledictions of the 

 Old Testament prophets are those aimed 

 at Edom. 



A GRfiAT "S.'VE'e; DEPOSIT" 



In the days of the Nabatheans, Petra 

 became the central point to which the 



caravans from the interior of Arabia, 

 Persia, and India came laden with all 

 the precious commodities of the East, and 

 from which these commodities were dis- 

 tributed through Egypt. Palestine, Syria, 

 and all the countries bordering on the 

 Mediterranean, for even Tyre and Sidon 

 derived many of their precious wares 

 and dyes from Petra. It was at that time 

 the Suez of this part of the world, the 

 place where the East and the West met 

 to trade and barter. It was also in fact 

 a great "safe deposit" into which the 

 great caravans poured after the vicissi- 

 tudes and dangers of the desert. Its 

 wealth became fabulous, and it is not 

 without some good reason that the first 

 rock structure one sees in Petra, guard- 

 ing the mysterious entrance, is still 

 called "Pharaoh's Treasury." It must 

 have been the Nabatheans who developed 

 the natural beauties of the situation and 

 increased the rock-cut dwellings and tem- 

 ples and tombs to the almost interminable 

 extent in which they are found today. 

 The palm\' period of the Nabatheans 

 extended from 150 B. C. to 106 A. D., 

 when the Romans conquered the country 

 and city, extended two Roman roads into 

 it, and established the province of Arabia 

 Petra. The Rock City was always to 



■ An address to the National Geographic Society, December 21, 1906. 



