Excavation in Petra
nick cobb
October 17, 2003
ART REVIEW | 'PETRA'
Rose-Red City Carved From the Rock
By GRACE GLUECK
Location, location, location! The scenery was sublime, but the desert
terrain of Petra, an ancient metropolis at its height from the first
century B.C. to the third century A.D., didn't make it the most
accessible of spots. Still, an ambitious real estate developer of that
time could have pushed Petra as one of the best places to prosper in
the Middle East.
Around the size of Lower Manhattan, the city was on a cliff-bordered
plain in what is now Jordan's part of the Negev Desert. Safe, wealthy
and abundantly provided with water, thanks to clever engineering,
Petra was the capital of the Arabian kingdom of Nabatea.
And it was the center of a bustling trade in incense, ivory, textiles
and other precious goods that flowed through it by camel caravan from
China, India and Southern Arabia to Mediterranean markets.
Though by our standards its population was tiny — some 20,000 at its
peak, around A.D. 50 — it was a highly sophisticated cultural
crossroads. The Nabateans who built it, skilled in commerce,
agriculture and engineering, began as nomads but evolved into
urbanites over a short period of time. They literally carved from rock
not only a lively metropolis but a necropolis of monumental tombs for
their kings and leaders.
Today an archaeological preserve gradually being rediscovered by
learned diggers, Petra comes to vivid life in the show "Petra: Lost
City of Stone," which opens tomorrow at the American Museum of Natural
History. Presenting major examples of Petra's art, architecture and
way of life by means of objects and photographs, the show is said to
mark the first cultural collaboration between Jordan and the United
States. It was organized by the American Museum of Natural History and
the Cincinnati Art Museum, which has the most extensive holdings of
Nabatean sculpture outside Jordan, the result of an archaeological
partnership with that country in 1937.
Petra declined after a Roman takeover in A.D. 106, partly because the
Romans devised new trade routes by sea to replace the camel caravans.
And in A.D. 363 a super-earthquake struck, destroying buildings and
crippling Petra's water system. As a vibrant city, it was finished.
It had a brief Byzantine period, beginning around A.D. 350, during
which Christian churches were built. But by 700 only a handful of
people remained, and sheep and goats grazed in what was once the
city's center. Petra was gradually overrun by the desert, although its
rock-cut tombs survived. For centuries it lay dormant, unvisited and
unmourned.
But in 1812 a Swiss-born, Cambridge-educated linguist named Johann
Ludwig Burckhardt passed through the city en route from Syria to
Egypt. He spent an uneasy three days there, unwelcomed as an outsider
by the inhabitants, and published an account of it in his book,
"Travels in Syria and the Holy Land."
The book sparked new interest in Petra, and more than 2,000 other
Westerners found their way there during the rest of the 19th century,
drawn in part by its Holy Land location. Among the visitors were the
American artist Frederic Edwin Church and the English painter and
rhymist Edward Lear.
In those days the common but erroneous belief was that Petra was the
ancient capital of the land of Edom, chastised in the Old Testament
for denying shelter to the Jews on their flight from Egypt. The view
was that its decline was its just reward. Church himself wrote in his
diary, "Here passed the Israelites and were turned back."
On display is his huge oil, "El Khasne, Petra" (1874), which
dramatically reveals the rock-cut facade of the many-columned Khazneh,
a resplendent tomb for an unknown royal, as it first appears to
visitors approaching through the narrow rocky gorge that was the main
entrance to Petra.
But a whole panorama of the city is projected in film images that
sweep across a humongous three-part screen, showing the massive scale
and extent of its roseate buildings. Among them are the residences and
public edifices that lined the central avenue in Petra's heart, mostly
built during the reign of King Aretas IV.
The many other areas of the show deal with Petra's art and artisanry;
engineering feats like the elaborate public waterworks; stone
inscriptions; luxurious items from upscale life, like a huge Roman
vase of carved marble with panther-shaped handles that obviously
belonged to a nabob; the eclectic religious traditions drawn from
surrounding cultures; colonies outside Petra; and later Roman
influences.
The art on display lacks the suavity and finesse of Greek and Roman
art; it is much more provincial and charmingly folkish but derivative
of both. Carved heads, architectural elements and objects of devotion
are of interest here.
Among other concepts worshiped in the multicultural Nabatean religion
was the zodiac, and one noteworthy item is a small statue of carved
limestone representing Nike, the Greek goddess of victory (circa A.D.
100).
She holds up a disk with zodiacal symbols surrounding a bust of Tyche,
the Greek goddess of fortune, with an emblematic crescent moon above
her right shoulder. The combined images of Nike and Tyche with the
zodiacal symbols pay homage to the abundance and prosperity that flow
from the heavens.
Not the least interesting fact about the statue is that it was
originally built into a temple wall and, probably damaged by the
earthquake of 363, found in halves. One half is owned by the
Antiquities Department in Jordan, the other by Cincinnati. For this
show the two have been joined, for the first time since antiquity.
Another of the show's stars, dating from the first century A.D., is a
massive head, probably of Dushara, a Greco-Roman god resembling Zeus
who was Petra's primary male deity. Sculptured in Hellenistic style,
with parted lips and skyward gaze, his head is crowned with a laurel
wreath set atop tightly curled long hair; he wears a short
shaggy-curly beard.
In the Nabatean culture, Dushara had the powers of an ancient Near
East storm god, with control over rainfall and vegetation, and he
served as protector of the royal house. The head was dug up from the
base of the Temenos (or courtyard) Gate, the arched entryway leading
into the sacred precinct of the Qasr al-Bint, Petra's most important
temple, situated at the convergence of the main caravan roads leading
to the city's center.
In wonderful contrast with this conventional-style work is a striking
small limestone stele, also dating from the first century A.D., from
Petra's Temple of the Winged Lions. Known as an "eye-idol," the
limestone piece takes the form of a betyl, or standing stone that
marked a deity's presence, within a rectangular shrine.
The betyl's typical geometric features are here transformed into a
stylized face, with deeply incised eyes, heavy eyebrows, a straight
nose and a small stern mouth, all placed on a very flat surface. A
straight wreath crowns the top of the linear forehead. Brancusi would
have loved it.
Not to be overlooked are some of the architectural elements — friezes,
capitals and such — that lend interest to the show. One is a section
of zodiac limestone frieze from Khirbet edh-Dharih, a religious
sanctuary outside Petra. This relief group of blocks intersperses
strongly sculptured figures of the Gemini, Castor and Pollux, and
Taurus with repeated squares of Nike crowning each of the figures with
a wreath.
A huge capital carved with elephant heads in limestone from the Great
Temple, a major architectural component near Petra's center, is an
impressive sight. Dating from the late first century B.C., it is one
of 120 columns that decorated the lower courtyard of the temple and
that depict the elephant, familiar to Nabateans as a result of trade
with India.
A warning: so packed is this show with fascinating objects and
information that it is not an easy visit. Set up with the museum's
usual expertise and helpful graphics, it still comes off as one of the
busiest installations around.
But nothing daunted, Petra comes through. A beautifully produced and
scholarly but readable book accompanies the show.