The Forum

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Petracita

The cover of your July/August 2000 issue, showing a camel and its rider on Petra’s colonnaded street, could easily have been one that we took during our visit in August 1999.

Joseph Basile’s “When People Lived at Petra” does not mention, however, that there is another Petra, a miniature version, about 3 miles north of the ancient city. Known as Siq al-Barid, Little Petra is not crowded and admission is free. It has tomb-temples, an extensive water system based on rain-capturing cisterns, and a fascinating painted house reached by climbing stairs obviously smoothed by thousands of ancient feet.

The Grandeur that Was Petra

Since the Nabataeans enjoyed regular, frequent trade and cultural exchange with the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Seleucids and Ptolemies (as well as with the Hellenized Jewish Hasmonean Kingdom in Jerusalem), it is easy to understand that the most impressive edifices of Petra—the Royal Tombs, el Deir and the magnificent Khasneh (Treasury)—reflect the glories of such urban centers as Alexandria and Antioch.

The Treasury is the jewel in Petra’s crown. As Iain Browning notes in his Petra: “Even with the best intent … native designers could never produce rivals to the wonders of the Hellenistic Near East, so it is conceivable that Greek artists, possibly from Damascus, were invited to work in Petra. The Khasneh, which they produced, must have had a high voltage effect on the Nabataeans.”

The first American to set eyes upon Petra’s fallen grandeur was the tireless traveler John Lloyd Stephens who, with the artist Frederick Catherwood, later discovered and described the spectacular world of the Maya. It was the sight of the Treasury’s facade that prompted Stephens to change professions, from lawyer to archaeologist. Some years later he noted: “I see before me the facade of that temple; neither the Colosseum at Rome … nor the ruins of the Acropolis at Athens, nor the Pyramids, nor the mighty temples of the Nile, are so often present to my memory.”

Daughters of Aaron?

Is it possible that the traditional Bedouin names of Petra’s Treasury of Pharaoh (Khasneh el-Faroun) and its Palace of the Daughter of the Pharaoh (Kasr el-Bint Faroun) are simply the product of garbled confusion between Faroun (Pharaoh) and Haroun (Aaron)?

If so, the Kasr el-Bint Faroun could have been the abode of the 010Daughters of Aaron, a version of the consecrated lay office for women in Syriac Christianity sometimes known as Bnat Qyama (Daughters of the Covenant).

Joseph J. Basile replies:

While it is possible that there might be confusion between “Faroun” and “Haroun,” the traditional Bedouin names of the Khasneh and Qasr el-Bint are derived from a fairly specific legend. In the early 19th century, local Bedouin told of a traveling Egyptian pharaoh who came to Petra with a retinue that included his daughter and a court magician. It was the magician who, according to the legend, carved the stone tomb facades with his magic, along with the treasury and palace of the princess. The specific nature of this tradition would seem to me to preclude the kind of confusion to which you refer.

Is East, West or North North?

In “Babylocentricity” (Ancient Life, AO 03:04), you say of the ancient Babylonian map: “Clearly, [the mapmaker] was not making a map to travel by. Assyria, which was really north of Babylon, is placed to the east.” Actually, if one assumes the map’s cardinal direction to be east rather than north, everything lines up rather well. The ancient Israelites considered east the cardinal direction, just as the Egyptians considered it to be south (the origins of the Nile).

Harold Brodsky replies:

The ancient Babylonian map is probably “oriented” with north at the top, or possibly west at the top (east is less likely). The placement of Susa on the map fits a west orientation. However, the flow of the Euphrates probably provided the main directional feature used by the Babylonians. Ancient Babylonian streets ran either parallel or perpendicular to this river. This suggests a northern orientation for the map.

Placing east at the top of a religious map (so as to look up to Jerusalem) is largely a convention of Western Christianity. Placing north at the top dates back to the scientific maps of the Alexandrian geographer Ptolemy.

Ancient Armenians in Jerusalem

Alerting readers to Jerusalem’s beautiful Bird Mosaic (Noga Tarnopolsky, Destinations, AO 03:04) is a worthy aim. I was part of the archaeological team that excavated at the corner opposite the Bird Mosaic, where an Armenian monastery was discovered. The highlight of our excavation was a perfectly preserved inscription in Armenian script, set in a mosaic floor, which read: “I Ewstat the priest laid this mosaic. (You) who enter this house, remember me and my brother Luke to Christ.” This mosaic and another one, written in Greek and found in front of the apse of the church, are presently on display in the Israel Museum’s Cradle of Christianity exhibit. This excavation is published in Ancient Jerusalem Revealed (Israel Exploration Society). This discovery, combined with my knowledge of the Bird Mosaic found across the street, prompted me to write a letter to then-mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, suggesting that the corner be named “Armenian Square” in commemoration of the ancient Armenian presence in the area. Unfortunately, Kollek lost his reelection bid and never had time to answer me. This note reminds me to take 011up this issue with the current mayor of Jerusalem.

Elgin Marbles, Round XIII

Your article on the Elgin Marbles (“Round and Round We Go,” AO 03:05) confirms my belief that, inevitably, when archaeology becomes politicized, the first casualty is the truth.

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the Greek government’s petition for the return of the Elgin Marbles, and the British government’s refusal to comply, it needs to be emphasized that the Greek authorities never intended to restore the sculptures removed at Lord Elgin’s instigation to their original place on the Parthenon. It is therefore disingenuous for Greek authorities to state that the marbles would return “to their natural environment” on the Acropolis. Given the pollution of that “natural environment” in Athens, which has already prompted the Ministry of Culture to remove from the Parthenon the remaining sculptures and place them under cover for protection, it was hardly likely that the Greek authorities would expose the Elgin Marbles to the very same fate from which they have just rescued their companion pieces.

The new Acropolis Museum, which has itself been mired in controversy for years and is still nowhere near completion, is not to be built on the Acropolis but below it in Makriyianni. It should also be pointed out that the sculptures from the Parthenon in the British Museum are displayed inside out—that is, they face inwards in the Duveen Gallery and not outwards as they did on the monument from which they were taken. If returned to Athens, the Elgin Marbles would be placed in the new Acropolis Museum in the same order and orientation they had on the Parthenon.

This, of course, leaves aside the questions of what benefit the scholarly world would derive from having the sculptures transferred from one museum to another in the so-called European Union, and what the Greek authorities would do if the marbles were offered back to them now. They would probably have to ask the British Museum to look after them until the new Acropolis Museum was ready.

Petracita