The Lost City: Johann Ludwig Burckhardt Rediscovers Petra
“I hired a guide at Eldjy, to conduct me to Haroun’s [Aaron’s] tomb, and paid him with a pair of old horse-shoes …
In following the rivulet of Eldjy westwards, the valley soon narrows again; and it is here that the antiquities of the Wady Mousa begin. Of these, I regret that I am not able to give a very complete account: but I knew well the character of the people around me; I was without protection in the midst of a desert where no traveller had ever before been seen; and a close examination of these works of the infidels, as they are called, would have excited suspicions that I was a magician in search of treasures; I should at least have been detained and prevented from prosecuting my journey to Egypt, and in all probability should have been stripped of the little money I possessed, and what was infinitely more valuable to me, of my journal book …
[I was taken to] a spot where the valley seemed to be entirely closed by high rocks; but upon a nearer approach, I perceived a chasm about fifteen or twenty feet in breadth … which is called El Syk … After proceeding for twenty-five minutes between the rocks, we came to a place where the passage opens … On the side of the perpendicular rock, directly opposite to the issue of the main valley, an excavated mausoleum came in view, the situation and beauty of which are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveller … It is one of the most elegant remains of antiquity existing in Syria …
The principal part [of this mausoleum] is a chamber sixteen paces square, and about twenty-five feet high. There is not the smallest ornament on the walls, which are quite smooth … but the outside of the entrance door is richly embellished with architectural decorations. Several broad steps lead up to the entrance, and in front of all is a colonnade of four columns, standing between two pilasters …
The natives call this monument Kaszr Faraoun, or Pharaoh’s castle [now often called the Treasury]; and pretend that it was the residence of a prince. But it was rather the sepulchre of a prince, and great must have been the opulence of the city, which could dedicate such monuments to the memory of its rulers.
From this place … the Syk widens, and the road continues for a few hundred paces lower down through a spacious passage between the two cliffs … Here to the left is a theater cut entirely out of the rock, with all its benches. It may be capable of containing about three thousand spectators … About one hundred and fifty yards further, the rocks open still farther, and I issued upon a plain two hundred and fifty or three hundred yards across … Here the ground is covered with heaps of hewn stones, foundations of buildings, fragments of columns, and vestiges of paved street; all clearly indicating that a large city once existed here …
It appears very probable that the ruins in Wady Mousa are those of the ancient Petra … Of this at least I am persuaded, from all the information I procured, that there is no other ruin between the extremities of the Dead sea and Red sea, of sufficient importance to answer to that city.”
From Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, Travels in Syria and the Holy Land (John Murray: London, 1822), pp. 421–431.