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 Petra (lit. Rock) was the capital
city of the Nabataeans, a tribe of
pre-Roman Arabs who dominated the
region around the Sixth century
BC. Located at the crossroads of
ancient trade routes, the city
survived on toll and taxes
collected from traders. Despite
several attempts to conquer their
capital, the Nabataeans remained
practically independent until the
defeat of Antony and Cleopatra and
the reunification of the Roman
Empire by Octavian in 31 BC. In
106, the Romans under Trajan
finally captured Petra to mark the
beginning of the decline of the
city. The city remained unknown to
the Western World for hundreds of
years until a Swiss explorer, J.L.
Burckhardt, heard about its
existence from the local Bedouins
in 1812.
The initial identification of the site as a marketplace—along with the adjacent ‘Middle Market’ and ‘Upper Market’—was made by the German expedition of Bachman, Wiegand and Watzinger, who completed the first extensive mapping of Petra’s city center (1921). Since no excavations were conducted at the time, however, these identifications were based primarily on their most prominent shared characteristic—large, open, unbuilt areas—and the expectation that a major entrepôt such as Petra would have a large centralized marketplace.
The Nabataeans carved their
Capital in the canyons and hills
of sandstone of Wadi Araba in
Jordan. The entrance to the city
is through The Alley (Al-Siq), a
winding trail at the bottom of the
canyon. Most famous is The
Treasury (Al Khazneh), which
fascinating façade was featured in
many movies. Carved in the pink
sandstone, the structure is 40 m
high and about 30x30 m wide. Its
architecture has been certainly
strongly influenced by the Romans,
which suggests it was built around
the First century AD. The city
includes other fascinating
monuments and structures, such as
Urn Tomb and the Royal Tombs, the
Colonnade Street, the Temples of
Dushara and Al-Uzza, and the High
Place of Sacrifice.
During a two-month field season in the summer of 1998, a survey and excavation was conducted in the so-called “Lower Market” in order to determine its function, organization, historical development, and its relationship to the other monuments in the city's civic center. Work began with the creation of an accurate map of the topography by the project’s surveyor, Paul Zimmerman, using the SiteMap surveying system, the computerized mapping system utilized by the Great Temple project (figs. 5 and 6). Relevant surface features and architectural components revealed through subsequent excavations were surveyed in and added to the overall
A monumental wall, 2.5 m high, runs east-west along the juncture between the quarry and the earthen terrace, bisecting the site (the pale line across the middle of fig. 3). The quarried area to the south of the wall—which is bounded to the south and east by vertical escarpments, and to the west by the Great Temple’s perimeter wall—is filled with a deep deposit of earth, forming a plateau 2.5 m above the level of the earthen terrace. At the center of the plateau, the ruins of a rectangular structure are clearly visible at the surface |
