“Our first, and, indeed, lasting impressions,” says Mr. Morier, “were astonishment at the immensity, and admiration at the beauties, of the ruins. Although there was nothing in the architecture of the buildings, or in the sculptures and reliefs on the rocks, which could bear a critical comparison with the delicate proportions and perfect statuary of the Greeks; yet, without trying Persepolis by a standard to which it never was amenable, we yielded at once to emotions the most lively and the most enraptured[88].”
WADY MOUSA
NO. XV.—PETRA (WADY MOUSA).
The whole land of Idumea, now a mountainous rocky desert, was vaguely known to be full of remains of ancient grandeur and magnificence; but the country is inhabited by fierce and intractable tribes of Arabs, who seem to have inherited the spirit of their forefathers, and to proclaim to approaching travellers, as the Edomites did to the children of Israel—“Thou shall not pass.”
“The evidence,” says Mons. De la Borde, “collected by Volney distinctly shows, that the Idumeans were a populous and powerful nation, long posterior to the delivery of the remarkable prophecies concerning them, recorded in Scripture; that they possessed a settled government; that Idumea contained many cities; that these cities have long been absolutely deserted; that Idumea was eminent as a commercial nation; and that it offered a much shorter route to India from the Mediterranean, than the one ordinarily adopted.”
Petra lies almost in a line between the Dead Sea and the gulf of Akaba, at the head of the Red Sea. “At what period of time it was founded it is impossible to determine[89]. From the mention of its inhabitants, the Edomites or Idumeans, in scriptural history, as well as from the character of its monuments, it is evident, however, that the city must be of immense antiquity. The Edomites had command of ports on the Red Sea, which put the commerce of India and Ethiopia into their hands, and was the source, both at an early period of their history and in the time of the Roman empire, of all their greatness. Petra was the centre point where the caravans rested between the Asiatic seas and the Mediterranean. The book of Job, a work of great antiquity, proves distinctly the great prosperity of his countrymen, the Edomites, and their acquaintance with many civilised arts. From it we learn that they wrought mines, manufactured wire-brass, and coined money; that they possessed mirrors, used scales and the weaver’s shuttle, and had many musical instruments; and, finally, that they were well advanced in astronomy and natural history, and had correct notions of a Deity and a future state. They also cut inscriptions on tablets, and their rich men built splendid tombs. All these things betokened no mean degree of civilisation in the land of Edom at a very early date, and confirm the supposition that portions of the remains of Petra are among the oldest, if not really the oldest, existing monuments of man’s hands.”
Dr. Vincent[90] says, “Petra is the capital of Edom, or Seir, the Idumea, or Arabia Petræa of the Greeks, the Nabotæa, considered by geographers, historians, and poets, as the source of all the precious commodities of the East.” The whole commerce of the East, indeed, originally passed through Arabia Petræa to Phœnicia, Tyre, and Egypt. “Notwithstanding,” continues Dr. Vincent, “that the caravans decreased in proportion to the advance of navigation, still Petra was a capital of consideration in the age of the Periplus; there was still a proportion of the trade passed from Leukè Komè (the white village) to this city, and its princes maintained a rank similar to that of Herod in Judæa. In all the subsequent fluctuations of power, some commercial transactions are discoverable in this province; and if Egypt should ever be under a civilised government again, Petræa would be no longer a desert.”
“The Nabatæi,” says Pliny, “inhabited a city called Petra, in a hollow somewhat less than two miles in circumference, surrounded by inaccessible mountains, with a stream running through it. It is distant from the town of Gaza, on the coast, six hundred miles, and from the Persian Gulf, one hundred and twenty-two.”