Monday, August 1, 2011

Digging In Petra for missing pieces


As I look at this picture that I took in 2002 I remember the excitement we felt after we found this column stone in this place. This was actually the base for the column that once stood there. We did not however find the rest of the column so the question is "What happened to it?"

This is not all that was missing. Most of the stones that made up the walls were also gone. But where?

In 363 AD an earthquake shook Petra and this temple shook apart. By that time most of the people in Petra had converted to the new religion, Christianity. Just up the hill from this temple is a big Christian Church That was built some years after the big earthquake. The fact that there were a lot of precut stones just down the hill was attractive to the builders. Much of the old crumbled pagan temple became part of the Christian Church in Petra.

That practice happened all over the Roman empire.

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