Petra - Jordan - page 349

University in the UK before moving to Aleppo in 1809. Here he converted to Islam and took the name Sheikh
Ibrahim bin Abdullah. Over the next two years he became a master of disguise, adopting local customs and putting
his alias to the test among local Bedouin.

In 1812, travelling between Damascus and Cairo, he heard locals tell of fantastic ruins hidden in the mountains of
Wadi Musa. Determined to see for himself, he had to think of a ploy to allay the suspicions of his guide and porters:
I, therefore, pretended to have made a vow to have slaughtered a goat in honour of
Haroun (Aaron), whose tomb I knew was situated at the extremity of the valley, and by
this stratagem I thought that I should have the means of seeing the valley on the way to
the tomb.

Jean Louis Burckhardt, Travels in Syria and the Holy Land

The plan worked and soon he was riding down the Siq, trying hard to hide his astonishment. His guide wasn't
fooled for long, and imagined that the pale Syrian had come hunting for treasure, declaring: 'I see now clearly that
you are an infidel, who have [sic] some particular business amongst the ruins.' To avoid occasioning more suspi-
cion, Burckhardt had to confine his curiosity to the briefest examination of the ancient monuments - enough,
however, to conclude that this was Petra, a place which he understood 'no European traveller has ever visited'. Des-
pite being a man not given to literary flourishes, his journals reveal something of the excitement of his discovery:
The situation and beauty of [the Treasury] are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveller,
after having traversed…such a gloomy and almost subterranean passage [the Siq]…it is one of the most elegant re-
mains of antiquity existing.

For many an explorer, this expedition would have been a lifetime's achievement - but not for Burckhardt. He went
on to find the source of the Niger, stumbled on the magnificent Ramses II temple at Abu Simbel in Egypt, and still
under disguise explored Mecca and Medina. In 1815 he contracted dysentery in Cairo which returned with fatal con-
sequences in 1817. He was buried as a Muslim in the Islamic Cemetery in Cairo. He was only 33 years old.

Temple of the Winged Lions
Offline map
The recently excavated Temple of the Winged Lions, built in about AD 27, is named after
the carved lions that once topped the capitals of each of the columns. The temple was
probably dedicated to the fertility goddess, Atargatis, the partner of the male god Dushara.
This was a very important temple, centred around a raised altar, and with a colonnaded
entry of arches and porticoes that extended across the wadi. Fragments of decorative stone
and painted plaster found on the site, and now on display in the Nabataean Museum, sug-
gest that both the temple and entry were handsomely decorated.

TEMPLE

Petra Church
An awning covers the remains of Petra Church (also known as the Byzantine
Church; Click here ) . The structure was originally built by the Nabataeans, and then rede-

CHURCH