protected it from the effect of time, presents it in almost the perfection of its first day. 
It is universally acknowledged to be exquisitely beautiful, and to produce a more powerful 
impression than any surviving monument even of Greece or Rome. Its style wants classic 
purity, but the elegance of the general effect makes errors in detail trivial. The stone is 
of a rich rose colour: the symmetry of its faqade is perfect; its preservation is almost 
complete. But the whole skill of the architect seems to have been devoted to the 
first impression. The interior is narrow and simple; from the vestibule the door opens 
into a plain, lofty room, excavated in the rock; behind this is another smaller, and 
small lateral chambers open from the large room and vestibule. Was this a Temple or a 
Tomb ? The general opinion is that it w r as the former. Yet would a Temple be placed in 
the very rush and torrent of public life, or in a chasm which scarcely allowed space for the 
access of the worshipper, and almost prohibited the forms of sacrifice? But it stands in a 
valley of tombs, and is only more stately than them all. If the genius of a splendid 
City, a thousand years past away, could be enshrined, the memory of the loveliness and 
grandeur of Petra could not have been transmitted by a nobler Mausoleum. 
ANCIENT WATCH-TOWER. 
This tower is a striking object, from its position on an overhanging mass of rock, rising 
abruptly from the plain, on the left of the ravine by which Petra is approached through its 
mountain barrier. Widely overlooking the Valleys of El Ghor and Akaba, it appears to 
have been one of a chain of posts, or of signal towers surrounding the City; an important 
and customary precaution in countries so liable to invasion. 
The tower is hewn out of the solid rock, and contains two chambers, but entirely plain, 
and without inscription or memorial of any kind. 
Robinson observed similar structures in this quarter. Keeping on directly towards the 
middle pass, Es-Sufah, near the foot of the mountain, he came to the ruins of a small post 
or castle of hewn stones. It was obviously intended to guard the pass. 1 The Artist, on 
leaving Petra by another route, saw the foundations of other towers of the same kind, and 
apparently intended to keep up a chain of communication. This chain could be traced 
nearly to Hebron, particularly in crossing the high ridge called Nukb al Sujah. 2 
Robinson, Biblical Researches, ii. 590. 
2 Roberts’s Journal. 
