PETRA
CHARACTERISTICS
The ruins of the former city nabatea of Petra, in the desert of Jordan, Baalbek competes in showiness and beauty with those of Palmira, in Syria, Baalbek in the Lebanon, or Gerasa, in Jordan. The greatness of his architecture carved in the sandstone - that with his seams of pink colors makes furthermore his beauty haughty.
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The front called Al-Khazneh (the Exchequer). It is an impressive experience. An immense front, of 30 m of width and 43 m of high place, excavated in the rocky face of pale pink eclipses everything around it. It was constructed in the 1st century as the tomb of an important king nabateo and it is a sample of the talent for the engineering of this former people.
The front has two levels; the low one, of 12 m of height, is decorated by six columns that support a fronton, and to the sides there are sculptural reliefs badly preserved that guard the entry; one thinks that they represent Cástor y Pólux,sons of Zeus. After the door there is an empty room of approximately twelve square meters and a species of hollow in the soil for the rituals in honor of the local gods, Allat, Al Uzza Y Dushara. In the second level it has represented three false summer-houses with six frontal columns.
The lateral summer-houses are squared and have a ceiling in the shape of fronton inclined towards the sides, and the head office is round; on this one there is situated the urn and the figure of an eagle that symbolizes a masculine deity nabatea. In the walls without excavating of the false summer-houses there are reliefs. In the head office, face, there is the figure of the goddess of Petra's fertility, known as Al Uzza, associated with Isis. In the year 2003 a low floor was discovered in front of the Exchequer, to approximately 6 meters of depth, which might form a part of the Petra plunged by the sediments that still it is necessary to excavate. It contains several tombs.
