Jan

Jordan - City of Petra Ruins

petra2

The city of Petra is an important archaeological enclave in Jordan, located in the basin between the mountains that form the eastern flank of Wadi Araba, the great valley that runs from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. On July 7, 2007 was considered one of the New seven wonders of the world.

From the hands of a nomadic people came one of the wonders of the ancient world: a city carved in sandstone that has withstood the weathering

For 600 years, a city nestled in the Jordanian desert was considered legend, like Atlantis or Trojan ancestors Although dozens reports, describing in detail the grand monuments carved in stone, nobody has been able to locate it until the early nineteenth century .

According to these same stories, Petra came at the hands of the Nabateans, who appeared in the Near East around the sixth century BC, during the Persian Empire. According to historians Strabo and Diodorus of Sicily , the Nabataeans were about 10,000 Bedouins living transporting spices, incense, myrrh and aromatic plants. They took charge of Arabia Felix, Yemen and Oman today, to the Mediterranean.

These nomads, "desirous of preserving their freedom calling 'their homeland' the wilderness, not planted wheat and did not build houses," as Jeremiah tells us, in the Old Testament, would surprise everyone by creating an empire and its capital carving - Petra .

The Nabateans settled in the land of Edon, southeast of the Dead Sea. There, they had a warehouse "on a rock extremely strong, which had one side," according to Diodorus. It was certainly the Umm el Biyara lot in the center of mass of Petra. Even today, access to the summit is very difficult. With its seven tanks and vertical slopes, this mountain is an impregnable fortress.

The December 6, 1985, Petra was recognized as World Heritage by UNESCO.

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