Petra Tour: Wadi Farasa East
Coming from Jabal al-Madhbah, the tour continues through the idyllic valley. Highlights are the Garden Triclinium, the Soldier Tomb complex, with the large colourful triclinium, and the Renaissance Tomb.
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When Gustaf Dalman found an idyll of lawns and flowering bushes in the upper section of Wadi Farasa East in the spring of 1904 and therefore called it "Garden Valley", he could not have guessed that there might have actually been a well-kept garden landscape there in Nabataean times. As S. G. Schmid writes in one of the IWFP reports the wadi must have looked like a "paradise on earth" at one time (more on this in the introduction). The green area surrounded by steep rock walls was fed by an ingenious water supply system and protected with dams against flash floods.
During the Nabataean period, it was not possible to look out over the upper valley from the interior (as in the photo above), because the platform was a closed courtyard lined with columns of a presumably two-storey house. In its center there is a 2.40 m deep cistern hewn into the rock, which used to be covered with slabs (see the next page).
On the photo you can see the remains of the medieval walls to the left of the cistern.
© Photos, text: Haupt & Binder
Coming from Jabal al-Madhbah, the tour continues through the idyllic valley. Highlights are the Garden Triclinium, the Soldier Tomb complex, with the large colourful triclinium, and the Renaissance Tomb.