Loving Petra to death

When will Petra disappear? In 1000 years? Or maybe 10?

Nearly a million tourists a year—two million hands and two million feet—roam over one of the New Seven Wonders of the World—and World Heritage Site—the ancient city of Petra. They come here because they want to experience this one-of-a-kind opportunity that is Petra—the “Rose Red City” carved from stone.

When tourists come to Petra (originally named Raqmu by its people), they come and love it. And loving it, they want to not only see it, but to touch it. Caress it. To feel the history within its bones. But they are loving it to death.

Of course these tourists are just like me. When I travel to some out of the way location, to hike or sightsee, I like to arrive appropriately attired—especially my feet. I’ll choose nice supportive hiking footwear, preferably with highly gripping and tough soles.

Hey, I don’t want to lose my footing, and I want to be comfortable for all that walking!

What almost none of these sightseers realize is that the extra grip of modern, tough rubber (under the pressure of 100 to 200 pounds), in contact with soft sandstone (the skin and bones of Petra), removes a few sand particles from the bedrock with each step.

“This doesn’t sound like a big deal. So what, if my boot dislodges three grains of sand? The world is made up of how many grains of sand? About a gajillion! I don’t think this is worth getting all worked up about.“

Erasing their signature

In the early 18th century, Johann Burckhardt finagled his way into the Petra valley, which had been abandoned for well over a millennia, and lay mostly buried in the literal sands of time. A few of the rock-carved tombs were used by locals to house goats and such, but that was it.

Since then, the foot traffic in Petra has risen decade by decade. After Burckhardt’s re-“discovery” of the city, Europeans artists and wealthy adventurers began making pilgrimages. Upon returning home, their excited descriptions built interest on the Continent. Travel increased.

Fast-forward to the 20th century when international tourism began to take hold. Starting with just a few hundred and then a few thousand Petra-lovers a year, by the end of the century, it was trending toward a million:

• • 1990— 102,151
  • 1995— 337,221
  • 2000— 481,198
  • 2005— 393,186
  • 2010— 975,285

All those feet, and all those hands are leaving their indelible and erosional marks on this special place.

The visionary Nabataean stonecutters and sculptors who fashioned this remarkable site, left a peculiar signature in the stone, which is found all over southern Jordan. In underground cisterns, in the walls of tombs, in the dressed blocks of temples, the carved stone surfaces are covered with precise, parallel grooves, diagonal to the horizontal plane.

But these weren’t textural decoration, the peculiar grooves allowed the secure adherance of smooth plaster coatings, upon which they painted bold bands of crimson, white, yellow, and blue. In its heyday, instead of colored the rose-red of the bedrock as today, Petra displayed a technicolor pallet.

But these grooves, the signature of the Nabataean builders, are rapidly disappearing. As feet tread, and as fingers and palms handle, the grooves are being worn away, bit by bit. In many places now, the grooves can no longer be seen. The marks of the makers are vanishing.

Not only tourists

I don’t mean to imply that tourism is the only mechanism of erosion.

The mere fact of uncovering these artifacts through archaeological excavation, results in their exposure to the natural elements:

• moisture,
• sunlight,
• wind,
• salt diffusion, and
• temperature cycles, 

and each of these forces works its own destructive magic.

How can we possibly learn about these Nabataeans (who left almost no written records) unless we uncover what they made and left behind? It is a conundrum of nearly all archeological research—we want to know who they were, what they did, and how they lived, but in doing so, we contribute to erasing the record.

The Kingdom of Jordan, wherein lies Petra, has a deep sense of history and highly values this historical site. They embrace it as a legacy treasure, and desire to share it with the world.

And, of course, they realize how much economic activity it can bring to their impoverished nation. But they feel a deep responsibility to conserve and protect Petra. Their fragile economy can’t support what is needed, so they must rely on outside sources to understand the need and assist in the effort.

What am I doing?

For my own part, I’m just an author. Who sort of stumbled into a love for Petra/Raqmu. It seemed the obvious setting and culture in which to play out a story that had been brewing inside me for 40 years. But the more I’ve learned about it, through archaeological and cultural research, the more I am fascinated.

“Mr. Author”, have you been to Petra—and what was it like?“

Unfortunately, the answer at this point is “no.” I’ve not yet been, and I do have an urge to go. But I struggle with the thought of knowing I will be adding my own small impact upon that sensitive, delicate site. And that small bit, multiplied by the millions of other small bits, results in  severe consequences.

Of course these thoughts are like many other matters in life. We can’t live and breathe in this world without leaving some kind of mark. We hope our marks will be good, productive, and loving, but almost without exception there will be at least some indelible, destructive, and defacing effects as well.

The End of all things

Finally, if we’re honest, we know that all things of mankind on this planet will eventually be eroded by time. And lost. This “world”—the one which we have made—is “going the way of all flesh,” and will ultimately vanish.

And our own lives, as significant and precious as they are to us, seem little, almost non-existent on the cosmic scale. What am I doing with my own life to make it all it can be? What are you doing?

The creators of Petra made something lasting (at least for a couple of millennia), which we still marvel at today.

I am reminded of some words written by the 1st-century historical man, Sha’ul of Tarsus, who makes a cameo appearance in my debut novel The Stone Cutter. He wrote to some of his friends in the Hellenistic city of Corinth, saying—

“If any of you build on this foundation with gold, silver, gems, wood, hay, or straw, your work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will make it obvious, revealing it with fire, which will test the quality of the work and materials.” This fire—the destructive force of time—will test all things.

So I hope to be careful in my own “building” activities. I make an effort to select the best, more precious, longest lasting materials I can obtain, and then to use my best skill and efforts to assemble and shape those materials into the finest work I can produce. I don’t always succeed, but that’s my aim.

While the visible manifestations of what we produce can—and will—erode over time, their invisible qualities, and their true essence can follow beyond this life and our temporal existence. This same Sha’ul wrote in another letter to those same friends—

“So we need to fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

We have the opportunity to look beyond ourselves, to connect with something—maybe Someone—larger than ourselves and unseen by our fleshly eyes, to build something which will last.

NOTE: an important paper (The Impacts of Tourism Development on…Petra) by the Queen Rania Institute of Tourism and Heritage, documents much of what is discussed in this article. Please check it out.

Also, Thomas Paradise studied Petra extensively over a period of decades, investigating the erosional factors at work there. His report: “Architecture and Deterioration in Petra: Issues, Trends, and Warnings” can be accessed through both Researchgate.net and Academia.edu (subscriptions required).