A "ROSE-RED" CITY

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 25, 25 October 1920, Page 4

A "ROSE-RED" CITY

HALF AS OLD AS TIME.

A contributor to "Asia" writes a fascinating story of his visit to Petra, "a rose-red city, half as old as time," carved out of the enchanted mountains of Edom. "It lies deep in the wilderness of the Arabian desert, a few. miles from the town of Maan, and' not far from Mount Hor, where the Israelites buried their great leader Aaron." he says. Many miles from any sign. of civilised habitation, deep in the heart of the Arabian desert, was a temple, a delicate and limpid rose, carved like a cameo from a sombre cliff. • It was even more beautiful than the .Temple of Theseus at Athens After trekking nearly a hundred miles across the desert, to come 'suddenly face to face with such a marvellous 'structure fairly took our breath away. "The temple was probably carved from a cliff almost two thousand years ago, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who visited Petra in A.P. 131. "The city lay farther down on the plain of aii oval valley, a mile and a half long and half a mile wide. How populous it was there is no way of telling, but several hundred thousand people must once have lived here. Only the more insignificant buildings' have ■perished, and even of these some stinking ruins remain. The upper part of the valley is the site of ancient fortrossses, palaces, tombs, and amusement resorts—all carved out of the solid rocks. The lower part was apparently a water circus, where the people indulged in aquatic sports and tournaments. \ "Stairs carved from the rock, some more than a mile in length, ran to the top of nearly all the mountains around Petra. Most of the steps cut into the mountains led to 6acrificial altars,:whore the people used to worship on the high places thousands of 'years ago. An even greater staircase winds up •to the Xount of Sacrifice, an isolated peak that dominates the whole basip. On the summit are two altars, one hollowed out for making iires and the other round, provided with a blood-pool for the slaughter of the victim offered to Dhushara and Allat, the chief god and goddess of ancient Petra. It was supposed to lie the most complete and perfect example in existence of an ancient Semitic high place. "Nobody knows when or by whom Petra was built. It had its beginning Ion" before the time of Abraham, and was" an old city when the Israelites fled from Egyptian bondage "V little more than a century ago,, John Lewis Burckhardt, a Swiss traveller who had heard rumours of a great city of rock lying far out on the fringe of' the Arabian desert, penetrated the eoree and found once again this wonderful old city of Petra, which had not been mentioned, in any literary record 6ince A'.D. 536."