PE'TRA (Hub. SELA, both names signify " rock") was anciently the capital of the Nabatlifeans, and was situated in the "desert of Edom" in northern Arabia, about 72 m. me. of Akabah—a town at the head of the gulf of Akabah, an arm of the Red sea. It occupied a narrow rocky valley overhung by mountains, the highest and most celebrated of which is mount Hor, where Aaron, the first Hebrew high-priest, died, and was thus in the very heart of the region hallowed by the forty years' wanderings of the Israelites. The aboriginal inhabitants were called Horim (" dwellers in caves"). It was then con quered by the Edomites or Idumeans (but it never became their capital); and, in the 3d or 4th c. me., it fell into the hands of the Nabathoeans, an Arab tribe, who carried on a great transit trade hetween the eastern and western parts of the world. It was finally subdued by the Romans in 105 A.D., and afterwards became the scat of a metropolitan; but was destroyed by the Mohammedans, and for 1200 years its very site remained unknown to Europeans. In 1812 Burekhardt first entered the valley of ruins, and sug gested that they were the remains of ancient Petra. Six years later it was visited by Messrs. Irby, Mangles, Banks, and Leigh, aml in 1828 by M.M. Laborde and Linant, and since then by numerous travelers and tourists to the east, as Bartlett, Porter, and dean Stanley. Laborde's drawings give us a more vivid impression of the ruins of Petra than any descriptions, however picturesque. These ruins stand in a small open irregular basin, about half a mile square, through which runs a brook, and are best approached by an extraordinary chasm or ravine, called the Sik, narrowing as it proceeds till in some places the width is only 12 ft., while the rocky walls of red sandstone tower to
the height of 300 feet. Hardly a ray of light can pierce this gloomy gorge, yet it was once the highway to Petra, and the remains of an ancient pavement can be traced beneath the brilliant oleanders that now cover the pathway. All along the face of the rocky walls are rows of cave-tombs, hewn out of the solid stone, and ornamented with facades. These are also numerous elsewhere. Originally, they were probably dwellings of the living, not of the dead—a supposition justified by au examination of their interior; but when the Nabathwans built the city proper in the little basin of the hills, they were in all likelihood abandoned, and then set apart as the family sepulchers of those who had formerly been "dwellers in the clefts of the rocks." The principal rains are: 1. (" the Treasure-house"), believed by the natives to contain, buried somewhere in its sacred inclosure. the treasures of Pharaoh. It directly faces the month of the gorge we have described, and was the great temple of the Petrwans. 2. The Theater, a magnificent building, capable of containing front 3,000 to 4,000 spectators. 3. The Tomb with the Triple Range of Columns. 4. The Tomb with Latin Inscription. 5. The Deer or Convent, a 'Inge monolithic temple, hewn out of the side of a cliff, and facing mount Hor. 6. The Acropolis. 7. Kusr Aron, or Pha raoh's palace, the least incomplete ruin of Petra. Most of the architecture is Greek, but there are also examples of the influence of Egypt, pyramidal forms being not unknown.