Petra: A Fantasy City Built in Reality
Photos from my visit to Petra during the tour through the Middle East. Includes the treasury, the monastery, the royal tombs, and many animals.
It’s hard to shake Petra from the fiction it inspired. It doesn’t seem real, an intricate ancient city carved out of desert rocks. It’s as if an advanced alien civilization left it here just to screw with us.
The elaborate facades aren’t the only fascinating part. Even the more “mundane” aspects are baffling. The Nabateans formed giant rectangular rooms, stairs, and water systems—all without explosives. Even with modern technology these tasks seem insurmountable.
Despite the unfathomable work they still abandoned the city. Civilization moved on. People found cliffside shade less comfortable than air conditioning. They developed cameras and smartphones, new marvels that gave them reasons to return to the old ones.
For more on the trip to Jordan, see my photos of Amman.
