Taking a break: Camels sit while their riders explore the beauty of the structures.

The word petra in ancient Greek refers to the rock. But in Ma’an, Jordan, Petra is known as the lost city of the Nabatean, the ancient peoples of North Arabia.

Possibly established as early as 312 BC, Petra was once a major trade city located on the slope of Mount Hor in a basin among the mountains, which formed part of the eastern flank of Arabah (Wadi Arabah), a large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba.

Enclosed by towering rocks and watered by a perennial stream, Petra not only possessed the advantages of a fortress, but controlled the main commercial routes that passed through it to Gaza in the west, to Bosra and Damascus in the north, to Aqaba and Leuce, to the Red Sea and across the desert to the Persian Gulf.

Evidence suggests that settlements existed in and around Petra in the 18th dynasty of Egypt (1550 - 1292 BC).

It is listed in Egyptian campaign accounts and the Amarna letters as Pel, Sela or Seir.

In 106 AD, when Cornelius Palma was governor of Syria, the part of Arabia under the role of Petra was absorbed into the Roman Empire as part of Arabia Patraea and became its capital.

It was around this time that the Petra Roman Road was built.

Petra declined rapidly under Roman rule, in large part from the revision of old sea-base routes. In 363, an earthquake destroyed many buildings and crippled the vital water management system.

The ruins of Petra were an object of curiosity in the Middle Ages and in 1812 Swiss traveler Johan Ludwig Burckhardt described it to the Western world once more.

In 2007, Petra was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World and became the symbol of the Kingdom of Jordan.

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