"The Nabataean City" a Petra Travel Page by Djinn76

The Nabataeans appear in the 6th century BC. They were mainly merchants who knew what they were doing. They started dealing with myrrh, incense and spices.
Three products Greeks and Romans were particularly fond of!
They also had the monoply of the asphaltum extracted from the Death See. It was then used, not for the road systems but to momify corpses.
They establish Petra as their capital. It was perfectly located between Damascus, Gaza Hedjaz, Egypts,...

So much wealth obviosuly excited the neighbors but the Nabateans resisted against the Macedonian and even the Romans. These last ones, since they were unable to defeat the Nabateans simply decided to strangle them commercially!

Apparently that worked out and this wonderful civilisation slowly declined. In the coming centuries Petra was slowly forgotten and only inhabited by the Bedouins....

In the 19th century, it was rediscovered by Johan Ludwig Burckardt, a swiss converted to Islam who pretexted a pilgrimage to Aaron Mount!

I've discovered this 8th marvel of the world following my stay in Amman, in mid-october.

It was the perfect time for it! At this time of the year, the weather is still quite hot but not too hot.

Even if Jordan is quite a safe country, war in Irak and troubles in Israel are scaring many tourists and they don't dare to come anymore. This is quite bad for the local people who are now dependent on tourism. Even if it is a bit selfish, this is however perfect, you can easily get alone, far from the crowd, in this wonderful site!

The Rammadan was starting as well, that means that around 5pm, even the Bedouins were leaving the site, you could then really be on your own...

The only drawback is that the days were quite short, it was getting dark around 6pm!! Even worse, Jordan had decided to shift the time change so that it matches the beginning of Rammadan... Well, that was a good deal for the muslims who were fastening, they could start eating much earlier...