Exhibit Explores Ancient Rock City
For Americans who can’t go to Jordan to see the renowned ruins of Petra, the ruins have come to us.
An exhibit, opened last week at Washington’s National Geographic Explorer’s Hall, seeks to re-create some of the history scattered throughout the imposing rocks of the ancient city, which the mysterious Nabataens carved from rose-colored sandstone cliffs in a remote Jordanian desert canyon 2,000 years ago.
Visitors enter the exhibit through a reconstruction of a portion of the Siq, a 250-foot-high crack in the canyon walls that is the portal into Petra. On display are winged statuettes in bronze, terra-cotta figures, storage jars, oil lamps, Nabataen coins and 1,400-year-old scrolls discovered in the corner of a ruin of a Byzantine church. There’s also a display of how the Nabataens constructed a sophisticated waterworks to supply their desert citadel.
“Petra: Jordan’s City in the Rock” is on display through Feb. 7. Information: tel. (202) 857-7589.
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