A ROSE-BED CITY HALF AS OLD AS TIME
One of the most colorful and romantic episodes of the war in the
Land of the Arabian Nights was a battle fought in an ancient
deserted city that had been asleep for a thousand years, only to
wake to the booming of big guns and the spirited clash of Turks
and Arabs. Here, among the immemorial and perfect ruins of a lost
civilization, Lawrence the archæologist and Lawrence the military
genius merged in one. To the few travelers who have ventured into
that hidden corner of the Arabian desert it is known as a “rose-red
city, half as old as time,” carved out of the enchanted mountains
of Edom. It lies deep in the wilderness of the desert, not far from
Mount Hor, where the Israelites are believed to have buried their
great leader, Aaron.
The battle took place on October 21, 1917, shortly after the fall
of Akaba. It was important from a military standpoint because it
definitely decided that the uprising against the Turks in Holy
Arabia was to develop into an invasion of Syria, an affair of
worldwide importance destined to revolutionize the history of the
Near East. In this battle Lawrence and his Bedouins fought the
Turks on the same mountain-tops from which Amaziah, king of Israel,
hurled ten thousand of the inhabitants to the canons below. Lawrence
successfully defended the city against the Turks in much the same
way that the Nabatæans defended it against the armies of Alexander
the Great three hundred years before Christ. He trapped the Turks
in the same narrow gorge that resounded to the tramp of Trajan’s
conquering legions two thousand years ago.
After hearing Lawrence’s enthusiastic description of the palaces
carved out of the living rock, where he had camped with his
Bedouins, I asked Emir Feisal if he would permit me to do a bit of
exploring among the mountains of Edom. He not only granted the
request but gave us a picked band of his wildest brigands as a
body-guard to protect us from robbers and enemy patrols. From Akaba
we trekked thirty-eight miles through the Wadi Ithm to one of
Feisal’s outposts, at Gueirra. The Wadi Ithm is a narrow gorge
hemmed in by jagged granite mountains crisscrossed with black lava
veins from twenty to two hundred feet wide caused by volcanic
eruption ages ago. This weird wadi pours out on to a mud plain
which reminded us of the Bad Lands of Dakota and the high plateaus
of Central Baluchistan. Here we occupied a deserted bell-tent for
several days before continuing our trek across arid mountain ranges
and sandy desert stretches. Up and up we went over a precipitous
rocky zigzag trail, where our camels, time after time, stumbled to
their knees. Reaching the summit of the Nagb, the camel-track led
across a grassy plateau to the battle-field around the wells of
Abu el Lissan. General Nuri Pasha, one of the commanders of Feisal’s
army, turned out his troops to welcome us. We stopped a few minutes
for coffee, and as I left the general’s tent he picked up the
princely Persian lamb rug on which we had been sitting and threw
it over my camel-saddle, insisting, in spite of all my protests,
that I should take it along and use it as a cushion. He also lent
me a hippopotamus-hide cane, presented to him by the king of
Abyssinia, with which to guide my dromedary. A few miles beyond
Abu el Lissan a courier from Feisal caught up with us and handed
me a letter of introduction from the emir to his commander at
Busta. The courier was a swarthy rascal, who looked like Captain
Kidd, with his flashing black eyes and fierce upturned mustachios.
His red head-cloth was embroidered with huge yellow flowers, and
his robes flashed as many colors as Joseph’s coat. At his belt were
a pearl-handled revolver and two wicked-looking daggers. To my
amazement he spoke typical New York Bowery English and dropped such
remarks as, “Say, cull, will youse slip me de can-opener?” He
informed me that he had lived fourteen years in America as a
machine-operator in a cigarette factory.
He was born in the mountains of Lebanon, and his real name was
Hassan Khalil, but in New York he was plain Charley Kelly. At the
outbreak of the World War, he was working for Thomas Cook & Son in
Constantinople and was immediately conscripted into the Turkish
army. At the second battle of Gaza he deserted and joined the
Australian forces as an interpreter. After serving with the British
in Egypt, he was finally transferred to the Hedjaz army. As soon
as we became better acquainted, Charley told me he was not a
Mohammedan, but an “R.C.,” which he explained in a whisper stood
for Roman Catholic. But he begged me not to reveal his secret to
any of the other members of the caravan, for he feared that he
would be killed instantly by some of our over-zealous Moslem
companions, should they discover his apostacy. Charley Kelly
entertained us around the camp-fire with detective yarns. He had
several Arabic translations of “Nick Carter” in his saddle-bags
and said the Egyptians believe Nick Carter to be the actual head
of the American Secret Service. According to Charley, “Nick Carter”
is a best seller in Egypt, where his exploits are regarded as
authentic history. If an Egyptian cannot read himself, he hires a
public reader to entertain him with one of these detective tales.
Another member of our column was a silent Egyptian with an immobile
face that might have been chiseled out of stone. We dubbed him
Rameses because he looked so much like the statues of that mighty
potentate along the Nile. The rest of our picturesque body-guard
was made up of Lawrence’s Bedouins. All these Beau Brummels used
kohl-sticks under their eyebrows and rouge on their lips and
cheeks. The prophet Mohammed is said to have remarked on one
occasion that there were two things no true believer should ever
lend to his brother—his kohl-stick and his wife.
Every morning Charley had to help Chase, who is a little man, mount
his camel. Practically every camel Chase rode died in its tracks
before the end of the journey. He was singled out as the special
object of attraction by all the insects of the desert. Several
mornings when we crawled out of our sleeping-bags we found scorpions
and centipedes between Chase’s blankets. One morning Chase handed
a treasured can of bacon to one of the members of our body-guard
with instructions to cook him a breakfast that would remind him of
home. But he ended by frying his own bacon. As soon as the can was
opened the Bedouin cook dropped it in horror and backed off, aghast
that his Moslem nostrils had been profaned with the aroma of
unclean meat. Like all Mohammedans, Arabs will not use pork in any
form. They cook their food in butter made from goat’s milk.
That day we passed a flock of white sheep, all of them fat as
butter, with thick curly wool and cute little corkscrew horns. A
Bedouin shepherd sat near-by on a lump of basalt strumming an
ancient Arab love-song on his lute. Some of these uplands of the
Hedjaz are carpeted with barely enough grass for sheep pasture,
and a few of the more settled tribes tend flocks rather than
breeding camels or horses. One schemer from Bagdad, hearing of the
uprising in the Hedjaz, was far-sighted enough to realize that the
Allies were bound to take an interest in the affair sooner or later
and that British gold pieces would supplant the Turkish sovereigns
which long had been the medium of exchange along the desert fringe.
So, from lead gilded over, he made thousands of counterfeit British
sovereigns, and as soon as the first gold began coming into the
Hedjaz from Egypt, but before the Bedouins were familiar enough
with it to detect the spurious from the genuine, he trekked across
the country buying all the sheep he could find. Instead of the
normal price of one pound for each animal, he offered two of his
counterfeit pieces. Then before the Bedouins had time to get into
Jeddah, Yenbo, and Wedj to spend their gold in the bazaars, the
Bagdadi drove his sheep north to Palestine, and sold them at two
pounds a head to the British army. When the hoax was discovered he
had vanished into the blue.
Distances in Arabia are not gaged by miles but by water-holes. The
night after our unfortunate bacon incident, just as we had finished
putting up our pup-tent at “third water,” otherwise known as Busta,
twenty Arab regulars came along mounted on Peruvian mules. The
mules were camel-shy, and as soon as they saw our caravan they
bolted at top speed in all directions, some of them bucking off
their riders and disappearing into the mountains of Edom. These
soldiers, who hailed from Mecca, sat up all night shouting and
singing around our campfire and firing their rifles into the dark.
The Turkish lines were only a few miles away, and I had a
presentiment that a Turkish patrol would slip up during the
confusion and put a finish to the hilarity by scuppering the lot
of us. Nothing happened, however, and after trekking eighty miles
across country without a single skirmish with the Turks to make
the expedition more lively, we came out on the top of a high
plateau.
Spreading off to the northwest before us were magnificent ridges
of white and red sandstone. About twenty miles to the north lay
the valley of the Dead Sea, and beyond, disappearing in purple and
gray haze, the Central Arabian Desert. The peaks ahead were the
sacred mountains of Edom. Our problem was to penetrate that massive
range of sandstone before us. We descended from the high plateau
into a valley twelve miles wide that narrowed to twelve feet, a
mere defile through the mountain wall. Through this gorge, or sik,
as it is called by the Arabs, our camels and horses scrambled over
boulders and pushed their way through thousands of oleander-bushes,
while the Arabs popped away with their pistols at the lizards
creeping across the stones. As we wandered through this rent in
the rock we marveled at its beautiful walls towering hundreds of
feet above us, at times almost shutting out the sky.
And on each side, aloft and wild,
Huge cliffs and toppling crags were piled.
Hassan Morgani, one of our Bedouins, who wore a purple jacket
trimmed in green and a pair of cavalry boots that he had taken from
a dead Turkish officer, told us that the gorge was the Wadi Musa,
the Valley of Moses. Charley Kelly confirmed this with the assertion
that it was here that Moses brought the water gushing from the
rock. To-day every Arab family in this region has its little Moses.
Through the narrow gorge a brook plunged in and out among the great
boulders, the oleanders, and the wild fig-trees. High above, the
sun warmed the tops of slender cathedral rocks to a wonderful rose
red.
After pushing our way through the gorge for more than an hour, we
suddenly rounded the last bend and stood breathless and speechless.
There, in front of us, many miles from any sign of civilized
habitation, deep in the heart of the Arabian Desert, was one of
the most bewildering sights ever revealed to the eye of man—a
temple, a delicate and limpid rose, carved like a cameo from a
solid mountain wall. It was even more beautiful than the Temple of
Theseus at Athens or the Forum at Rome. After trekking nearly a
hundred miles across the desert, to come suddenly face to face with
such a marvelous structure fairly took our breath away. It was the
first indication we had that we had at last reached the mysterious
city of Petra, a city deserted and lost to history for fourteen
hundred years and only rediscovered during the last century by the
famous Swiss explorer, Burckhardt.
The secret of the enchantment of this first temple we saw lies
partly in its position at one of the most unusual gateways in the
world. The columns, pediments, and friezes have been richly carved,
but it is difficult to distinguish many of the designs, which have
been disfigured by time and Mohammedan iconoclasts. At one side
are two rows of niches, evidently the traces of ladders used by
the sculptors who carved their way down. These artist-artisans used
a tooth tool that they might get the maximum effect out of the
colored strata, which seem to form a perfect quilt of ribbons and
swirl like watered silk in the morning sunlight. Although the
temple is wonderfully preserved, it shows the effects of the
sand-blasts of the centuries. The auditorium within is almost a
perfect cube, forty feet each way. The architecture is of a corrupt
Roman-Grecian style. The temple was carved from the cliff almost
two thousand years ago during the reign of the Roman Emperor
Hadrian, who visited Petra in a. d. 131. The desert Arabs
who were with me said it was called El Khazneh, or the Treasury,
because of the great urn that surmounts the edifice, which the
Bedouins believe is filled with gold and precious jewels of the
Pharaohs. Many attempts have been made to crack the urn, and it
has been chipped by thousands of bullets. My body-guard also fired
away at it, but fortunately it was nearly a hundred feet above
their heads. Colonel Lawrence is of the opinion that the building
was a temple dedicated to Isis, a goddess popular during the reign
of Hadrian. One traveler had carved his name in letters a foot high
on one of the pillars of the temple, but Lawrence ordered his men
to polish it out.
The city lay farther down on the plain of an oval valley, a mile
and a half long and half a mile wide. How populous it was there is
no way of telling, but several hundred thousand people must once
have lived there. Only the more insignificant buildings have
perished, and even of these some striking ruins remain. The upper
part of the valley is the site of ancient fortresses, palaces,
tombs, and amusement resorts—all carved out of the solid rock. The
lower part was apparently a water circus where the people indulged
in aquatic sports and tournaments. Petra is a huge excavation made
by the forces of nature. From the nine-thousand-foot plateau from
which we first saw the mountains of Edom, we had dropped down to
an altitude of one thousand feet when we entered the ruined city.
All the travelers who have visited Petra have marveled at the
wonderful tints of its sandstone cliffs. It is carved from rock
the colors of which beggar description at certain hours of the day.
In the morning sunlight they are like great rainbows of stone
flashing out white, vermilion, saffron, orange, pink, and crimson.
Time and the forces of nature have played the magician, painting
the different strata in rare tints and hues. In places the layers
of rock dip and swerve like waves. At sunset they glow with strange
radiance before sinking into the sombre darkness of the desert
night. We wondered at times whether we were really awake or whether
we had not been transported to fairy-land on a magically colored
Persian carpet.
Stairs carved from the rock, some more than a mile in length, run
to the top of nearly all the mountains around Petra. We climbed
one great staircase ascending to a height of one thousand feet
above the city to the temple which the Arabs call El Deir, or the
Convent, a most impressive gray façade, one hundred and fifty feet
high, surmounted by a gigantic urn, and decorated with heads of
Medusa. Most of the steps cut into the mountains lead to sacrificial
altars, where the people used to worship on the high places
thousands of years ago. An even greater staircase winds up to the
Mount of Sacrifice, an isolated peak that dominates the whole
basin. On the summit are two obelisks and two altars. One altar is
hollowed out for making fires, and the other is round and provided
with a blood-pool for the slaughter of the victim offered to
Dhu-shara and Allat, the chief god and goddess of ancient Petra.
One of my Bedouin companions insisted upon taking off his raiment
and bathing in the rain-water which had collected in the pool. The
average Bedouin needs a little encouragement along these lines,
and so we did not reprimand him for his sacrilegious act. Lawrence
told me that it was supposed to be the most complete and perfect
example in existence of an ancient Semitic high place. Near the
altars are the two great monoliths, each about twenty-four feet
high, which the people of Petra carved out of the solid rock and
used in their phallic worship, one of the oldest forms of worship
known to man. The names of these monoliths and the nature of the
worship do not admit of description. The mountain-top commands a
view of all the surrounding valleys and mountains, as well as most
of the ruins of the city. The outlook is sublime. It is a scene to
stir in one’s heart those emotions which have ever led man to
worship his Creator. On a peak near-by are the broken remains of
a Crusader’s castle. Further off to the left rises a black lava
mountain. On its summit, glistening beneath the burning rays of
the Arabian sun, we saw a small white dome, white like the bleached
skeletons we passed in crossing the desert between Akaba and the
mountains of Edom. This peak is Mount Hor, and the dome a part of
a mosque built by the Bedouins over the traditional tomb of Aaron,
high priest of the Israelites and brother of Moses. We spent a day
ascending it and upon reaching the summit found a Turkish flag
flying over Aaron’s tomb. As a propitiation before any important
event takes place, the desert Arabs climb Mount Hor with their
sacrifice of a sheep and cut its throat before the tomb of Aaron.
Although no news of it reached the outside world at the time, the
far-flung battle-lines of the Great War reached even to the slopes
of Mount Hor.
All the buildings of this city of ghosts have elaborate façades,
but within they are simple and austere. The magnitude and beauty
of them even now strikes one with awe. How much more they must have
meant to beauty-worshipers in the days ‘when the city pulsed with
life! Most of the stone is rose-colored when the sun falls upon
it, and shot with blue and porphyry. The deserted streets are rich
with laurels and oleanders, whose hues seem copied from the rock
itself. In fact, the only inhabitants of this rose-red city for
hundreds of years have been the countless millions of brilliant
wild flowers that flourish in the cracks of the hundreds of former
palaces and temples and wind themselves around half-ruined columns.
Petra’s mighty men and beautiful women have passed on to that
undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns. It is
indeed a scene to impress one with evanescence of all life.
The worldly hopes men set their hearts upon
Turn ashes, or they prosper,
And anon like snow upon the desert’s dusty face
Lighting a little hour or two—are gone.
In the center of the city, surrounded on all sides by temples and
palaces and tombs, is a great amphitheater, cut out of the base of
the same mountain that leads to the great high place of sacrifice.
Tiers and tiers of seats face the mountain avenues of tombs. The
diameter of the stage is 120 feet, and the theater is the one
symbol of life and mirth in all this mysterious deserted city. The
laughter and cheers of thousands once rang here across this hollow
cemetery of ancient hopes and ambitions. Here thousands of years
ago the Irvings and Carusos of that bygone age performed and
received the plaudits of their admiring thousands. Where now are
all the gay throngs who occupied these tiers on feast-days and
watched the games? The lizards are crawling over the exquisitely
colored seats to-night, and the only sounds that have been heard
in the theater for centuries have been the desolate howls of
jackals. Little did the ancient Edomites or Nabatæans imagine that
a people called Americans from an unknown continent would one day
wander among the ruins of their proud city.
It seems no work of man’s creative hand
By labour wrought as wavering fancy planned;
But from the rock as if by magic grown;
Eternal, silent, beautiful, alone.
All rosy-red, as if the blush of dawn
That first beheld it were not yet withdrawn.
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe
Which man deemed old two thousand years ago.
Match me such marvel, save in Oriental clime;
A rose-red city, half as old as Time.
[By Dean Burgon (fellow of Oriel and afterward vicar of St
Mary’s), prize poem, Newdegate, 1845.]
The presence of Egyptian architecture and symbols indicates that
Petra must have been built by a race that had come in contact with
the culture of the peoples who carved the Sphinx and piled up the
pyramids. Even the desert traditions of nomenclature support the
belief that Petra was at some time identified with Egypt. The
nomads believe that these rocks were carved by Jinn, under the
order of one of the Pharaohs, and not only are they certain that
the great urn on El Khazneh contains the wealth of the old Egyptian
tyrants but they believe that they actually lived in Petra and call
a ruined temple down in the valley Kasra Firaun, the Palace of
Pharaoh. But nobody knows when or by whom Petra was built. Some
think that it had its beginning long before the time of Abraham
and was an old city when the Israelites fled from Egyptian bondage.
As we stand there amid the ruins of this forgotten city, we are
reminded that
When you and I behind the veil are passed,
Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last,
Which of our coming and departure heeds,
As the seven seas shall heed a pebble cast.
The region around Petra was known as Mount Seir in the time of
Abraham, and it is said that Esau, with his followers, came to this
country after he had lost his birthright. We read in the Old
Testament about Petra. It is called Sela, which is Hebrew for rock.
It is believed that when the children of Israel were wandering in
the Wilderness they came upon Petra and asked for permission to
enter and rest. But the people of Petra refused, and Israel’s
prophets predicted its desolation. Obadiah accused it of being
proud and haughty, saying: “Though thou mount on high as the eagle,
and though thy nest be set among the stars, I will bring thee down
from thence, saith the Lord.” In the time of Isaiah it was a proud
and voluptuous city, of which the stern old Jew predicted
destruction.
The Nabatæans, an ancient Arab tribe, conquered Edom, and by 100
b. c. had created a powerful kingdom extending north to
Damascus, west to Gaza in Palestine, and far into Central Arabia.
Lawrence told me that the Nabatæans were great pirates who sailed
down the African coast and made devastating raids on the Sudan.
They had reached a high stage of civilization, did beautiful
glass-work, made fine cloth, and modeled pottery. They frequently
visited Rome and Constantinople. Both King Solomon and the queen
of Sheba had employed the Nabatæans, who rivaled even the Palmyrians
in organizing a rich caravan trade and made Petra their principal
commercial center in Arabia. Antigonus visited Petra in 301 b. c.
and found there large quantities of frankincense, myrrh,
and silver.
The Greeks, knowing of this fortress city impregnable in its
mountains, were the first to name it Petra, which means rock.
Tradition says that Alexander the Great conquered all the then
known world and wept because there were no more worlds to conquer.
But tradition is wrong. Here is one city that Alexander the Great
failed to conquer. Diodurus Siculus tells us that Alexander
considered Petra of such importance that he sent Demetrius with an
army to capture it. Demetrius tried to force his way into it by
the same narrow defile through which we entered. But the inhabitants
shut themselves up in their mountain fastness and successfully
defied both siege and assault. Although the city refused itself to
the visitor who came with the sword, it welcomed him who came with
the olive-branch.
As the capital of the Nabatæans, it rose to its zenith in the
second century before Christ. Greek geographers of those days
called the land of Edom by the name “Arabia Petræa.” Under Aretas
III, surnamed Philhellene or friend of the Greeks, the first royal
coins were struck, and Petra assumed many of the aspects of Greek
culture. Even in the golden age of Rome when Augustus sat on the
throne of the Cæsars the fame of this far-away city had reached
Europe. It was a Mecca for tourists from all over the world, and
it must have had a population of several hundred thousand souls.
It was a seat of arts and learning to which the Praxiteleses, the
Michelangelos, and the Leonardo da Vincis of that day repaired.
Its hospitality was a byword among the ancients. It opened its
doors to the early Christians, who were permitted to have their
houses of worship there side by side with the temples of Baal,
Apollo, and Aphrodite. Petra was to this part of Asia what Rome
was to the Romans and Athens to the Greeks. In a. d. 105
one of Trajan’s generals conquered Petra and created the Roman
province of Arabia Petræa, but the city continued to flourish as
a trade-center under the strong peace of Rome. In those days Petra
was the focusing-point on the caravan routes from the interior of
Arabia, Persia, and India to Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. It was
a great safe-deposit of fabulous wealth, fortressed by frowning
cliffs. Both Strabo and Pliny described it as a great city. But
when Roman power waned, the Romanized Nabatæans were unable to
withstand the desert hordes. The caravan trade was diverted through
other channels; Petra declined in importance and ultimately was
forgotten. In the twelfth century the Crusaders, under Baldwin I,
sent an expedition through the locality and built many castles;
they were expelled by Saladin.
There are many indications that Petra was a pleasant and
pleasure-loving city. Its wealthier classes must have lived in
luxury such as even the luxurious East has not known in many
centuries. With its concert-halls, its circuses, its mystic groves,
its priests and priestesses of many sensual religions, its wealth
of flowers, its brilliant sunshine, and its delightful climate, it
must have been at the same time the Paris and the Riviera of Asia
Minor. But, except for its immortal sculpture and the few casual
tributes to it by writers from alien lands, it has not left a
single record of its manner of living, or handed down the name of
a single one of its Homers or its Horaces.
Rose-red there lies, and vivid in the sun,
A magic city, hid in Araby;
Of her no ancient legend has been spun,
And all her past the silent years have won
To the deep coffers of antiquity.
About her brooding stillness there blow
The scarlet windflowers, as a carpet flung
Upon the stones. And oleanders grow
Where, in the night, the mourning jackals go
A-prowl through temples of a god unsung.
And so she stands, and centuries have kept
Her olden secret, tragic or sublime;
Without her gates, what tides of men have swept,
Within her portals, race of kings have slept?
This “rose-red city, half as old as Time.”
Was there no poet’s voice to chant her pride,
To clarion her magic down the years?
No warrior famed, to set her valourous stride?
No splendid lovers who for love’s sake died,
Gifting to song their passion and their tears?
Was there no storied woman’s golden face
To glimmer down unnumbered years to come?
No prophet’s vision to foretell her place,
Mysterious city of forgotten race?
Only her beauty speaks, and it is dumb.
And so she stands, while Time holds jealously
Her olden secret, tragic or sublime;
Her sorrows, joys, her strength, her frailty
Are in the coffers of antiquity,
This “rose-red city, half as old as Time.”
[by Mona Mackay, Christchurch, New Zealand.]
A little more than a century ago, John Lewis Burckhardt, a Swiss
traveler, who had heard rumors of a great city of rock, lying far
out on the fringe of the Arabian Desert, penetrated the gorge and
found once more this wonderful old city of Petra, which had not
been mentioned in any literary record since a. d. 536. In
the century or more since Burckhardt wrote of his discovery of the
rock city in a letter from Cairo, only a comparatively few travelers
and archæologists from the West have visited Petra. The danger of
violence from Bedouin nomads was so great that not many had the
zeal to attempt it. The lion and the lizard kept the court where
Jamshyd gloried and drank deep, until Lawrence brought his fighting
Bedouins into this city of tombs and empty palaces.