| It has many high mountains, located on the slopes of the Mount of the Altar | The entrance approach and the settlement itself were made possible by the creative genius of the extensive water distribution and storage system |
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| It seems, however, to have lingered on as a religious centre | Criterion iii : The serried rows of numerous rock-cut tombs reflecting architectural influences from the Assyrians through to monumental Hellenistic; the sacrificial and other religious high places including on Jebels Madbah, M'eisrah, Khubtha, Habis and Al Madras; the remains of the extensive water engineering system, city walls and freestanding temples; garden terraces; funerary stelae and inscriptions together with the outlying caravan staging posts on the approaches from the north Barid or Little Petra and south Sabra also containing tombs, temples, water cisterns and reservoirs are an outstanding testament to the now lost Nabataean civilization of the fourth century BC to the first century AD |
The execution of a successful corporate and business strategy soon took Petra to great heights and enabled it to become competitive with long-established companies.
24| 85—60 BCE , the royal coins begin | An ingenious water management system allowed extensive settlement of an essentially arid area during the Nabataean, Roman and Byzantine periods |
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| It was dedicated to Obodas I and is believed to be the symposium of Obodas the god | Petra is half-built, half-carved into the rock, and is surrounded by mountains riddled with passages and gorges |
[citation needed] The Semitic name of the city, if not Sela, remains unknown.
16| Source: Outstanding Universal Value Brief synthesis Situated between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea and inhabited since prehistoric times, the rock-cut capital city of the Nabateans, became during Hellenistic and Roman times a major caravan centre for the incense of Arabia, the silks of China and the spices of India, a crossroads between Arabia, Egypt and Syria-Phoenicia | On the authority of Josephus Antiquities of the Jews iv |
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| 315—403 writes that in his time a feast was held there on December 25 in honor of the virgin Khaabou Chaabou and her offspring Dushara The Theatre The Nabataeans worshipped the Arabgods and goddesses of the pre-Islamic times as well as a few of their deified kings | The resettlement more than twenty years ago of the Bdul Bedouin tribe and their livestock away from their former seasonal dwellings in the Petra basin to a new village at Umm Sayhun was aimed in part at arresting this process |
The first European to describe them was Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1812.