Mysterious Nabataeans built Petra, and now tourists delight freeze at a meeting with the city in the rock. For information about the Nabataean state reached by the works of Diodorus, Strabo, and Josephus, mentioned in ancient sources on the Great Silk Road. But information about the origin of the Nabataeans themselves do not. Leaving only a guess. They may be descendants of Ishmael (he was the son of Nabayot ), son of Abraham, or the lost tribe of Israel since the destruction of the First Temple. Or maybe they are - a sect ( nabateyan, founded after the flood the city of Babylon, or, according to E. Blavatsky - a mystical cast, dedicated to the god of the Secret Wisdom?.
The early Nabataeans rules pagan cult. The main deities of the pantheon were Dushara and women's parallel Allat, the mother of all gods. The final epitaph, which has reached us, says: ... During the Roman domination Allat was identified with Athena, Venus, Dushara - with Zeus and Dionysus. A story pozdnegrecheskoe Epiphanius draws an analogy Dushary Christ and celebrating in the same day.
The future of the Nabataean state seized the central and southern parts of modern Jordan, southern and south- eastern part of Israel ( Arabian Basin ), central and southern Negev, closely adjacent to the kingdom of Judah. In the II century BC. e. in the history of the Nabataeans is a powerful leap. For a century this nation of nomads into a settled.
Nabataeans became famous as a skilful architects. In addition, they are better than other people have mastered the science of irrigation. The Arabian desert is blooming gardens only when the Nabataeans. Most of the inhabitants of the kingdom became traders. Now they administered prices, charge a fee. They made their capital Petra, located at the intersection of three major trade routes, where it is stored, according to legend, untold riches.
Speaking on the pro-Arab language, the Nabateans create written in Aramaic, which was later significantly affect the Arab. Themselves by the end of the kingdom of the Nabateans go into Greek.
Reigning kings of the first alternate sheikhs who aspire to full power deified. Aretha Title IV itself as ... Nabataean become related with the elite of the Jewish. The mother of King Herod - the queen of Nabataean.
The capital of the kingdom of Peter was a key transit hub in which all the caravan routes of the ancient world. The Egyptians carried their goods in the Roman Empire and Arabia. Arabians by Peter spread incense and myrrh around the world. And in those days they were valued higher than gold.
Nabataean city was not just a caravanserai in the way of merchants. He played the role of the exchange. Many merchants do not dare to go further through the desert, and passed the Commodity inhabitants of Petra, and later they sold it. There went his own coin minting.
Two hundred years of the Nabataeans flourished. In 106, the n. e. is the end of an independent state. Hard won victory of the Roman Emperor Trojan. Since the IV century BC. e. Nabataeans slowly dissolves in the Christian Byzantine Empire, and disappears in the Middle Ages.
MYSTERY The Holy Grail.
And a half years in the hot Jordan, in the ancient city of Petra expedition Russian archaeologists working. Our experts will explore the dungeons of the legendary city. It is in them, according to some sources, may be hiding untold riches Nabataeans.
The city is built on a high -level architecture: admired the skill of the ancient engineers who have managed to hollow out caves in the cliffs of sand so that they could not sleep and did not elute. Arab critics still do not believe that Peter could do to build people. They understand what methods were used by nomads, the Nabataeans at such a high-tech building. The city was built very quickly and just as quickly settled. It flourished in the I century BC, and the last mention of dates VII century after Christ.
In the rocks there are residential apartments and flats. Almost everywhere there are places for prayer on the one hand in the stone cutting, the better to stand, but on the contrary - the icon. There is a huge amphitheater with a capacity of about 3000 people and served as a burial place for lush.
According to one version, in Peter kept the treasures of pharaohs. According to another - there is hidden spiritual treasure - the Holy Grail, in search of the Crusaders who came here. Historians claim that the Nabateans themselves may well have accumulated enough gold and jewelry.
Today the main occupation of local people, the Bedouins - trade. They sell mostly handicraft souvenirs for tourists who do not represent artistic or other value. Their ancestors did not peddling trinkets to trade and home-made consumer goods, preferring products from gold, silver, precious stones.
In the city here and there, dig small jars with treasures. In the souvenir shops you can buy jewelry - bracelets, necklaces - with a stylized antique coins. And tourists are constantly finding something in the sands of antiquity - fragments of pottery, funerary urns. Those who are seriously interested in the numismatics, archaeologists are sent to the black, despite the fact that illegal Archaeology in Jordan is severely punished. However, it is difficult to resist when the caches are hidden somewhere nearby, and no one wants to believe that in this affluent city is left of these treasures.
CITY OF THE DEAD.
Main place long favored by treasure hunters - Al Khazneh. Translated from Arabic - the treasury or the treasury. In search of gold, even the Bedouin was shot from guns facade. Interestingly, the top of the building is crowned by a large stone pot. Local people can not understand what it took to decorate the edifice ordinary pot, a place which in the pottery workshop. Among the Bedouin legend goes that it is just hidden treasures of the ancient. They say that the pot is to get well, and then Marksman literally osyplet gold and precious stones. But this is only a legend.
But where is the treasure, which, despite all attempts, and can not be found, and whether they were in general? . However, the scientist has suggested that their long- looted. Adheres to the same version and critic Leo Sanchez Masiel. He was confident that the value is gradually carried away from the people themselves are Petra, leaving the dying city, after the III century, the main trade routes began to move north to Palmyra.
Main place long favored by treasure hunters - Al Khazneh.
Jordan also guides say that the great legacy of the Nabataeans not gone anywhere from Petra. They say that under the visible part of the city is a complex of caves, which is just hidden treasure Nabataeans.
To date, scientists have studied only a small part of the Stone. Excavated the buildings that are located close to the surface of the earth. Only recently, just in recent years, archaeologists have begun to make their way deep into the. And were immediately rewarded laying before the excavation of Al Khazneh, scientists have found a hitherto unknown burial. It seems that Peter is only now beginning to discover the secrets of their main.
Marina Nikitina.
Discuss. 
