Petra, The Stone City
Petra is an archaeological site in Jordan. Is the remains of the ancient capital of the Nabataean Kingdom, founded around 300 BC. His most famous remains are the buildings carved from the same stone of the rocky walls of the narrow valley of the Arava.
The name means stone in Greek, and it is precisely because the city is entirely built with pink sandstone. The most famous buildings are the Temple of the Winged Lions and the Treasury. Since 1985 is recognized as World Heritage by UNESCO.
Abandoned for many years, was revealed to the world’s knowledge by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1812. Petra also remained inaccessible to most people until after the First World War.
A highway reaches Petra since 2004. In Travel Wiki recommend you hire a Bedouin at the entrance of the archaeological park in the Visitors Center, as one can well take advantage of the knowledge they have guides who sometimes have lived their whole life in Petra. And for the rental of a donkey or a camel, they will tell the history of the site. Continue reading
Great Place in The World: The Sphinx of Egypt
The Sphinx. This sculpture, which depicts a lion with a human face (is believed to represent the pharaoh Khafra, at least, wears on his head the typical klaft, mantle worn by the pharaohs) is contemporaneous with the pyramids, is 70 meters long and 20 high. To build it, took a mound of limestone on the plains, who carved and filled with stone blocks. When I had a thousand year old Pharaoh Tuthmosis IV between his legs made carve a scene depicting a dream in which the Sphinx gave him the throne in return for saving her to die buried under the desert sand.
More than a thousand years later, in Roman times, a shrine was excavated within the Sphinx. And when the Sphinx and more than four thousand years after these changes came to be destructive rather than constructive: the first iconoclasts, and the Mamluks then mutilated the monuments, damaging his tearing eyes and nose. Here we see a first example, although unfortunately not the last, which shows that among the capabilities of man is not only to build wonders, but also destroy them.
Great Place in The World
Egyptian Pyramids
The Pyramids of Egypt are all vestiges bequeathed to us by the Egyptians of antiquity, the most prodigious and famous monuments of this civilization, and in particular, the three great pyramids of Giza, the tombs or cenotaphs of the pharaohs Khufu, Khafre Micerino, and whose construction dates back to the great majority of scholars, the period known as the Old Kingdom of Egypt. The Great Pyramid of Giza, built by Cheops (Khufu) is one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Background
The mastaba, almost prismatic construction, it was the burial of the kings of the Archaic period in Egypt. The reasons for the passage of the pyramids mastabas not well known, but generally mentions the desire to reach heights increasingly significant to express the importance and power of the deceased pharaoh.
Classical pyramids
This type of pyramid is the stage that leads, in the final stage of evolution, to the classic pyramids of smooth surfaces, of the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2500 BC), the most famous are the pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Micerino, built on the plateau of Giza, near Cairo.
Other pharaohs of Dynasty IV began construction of their pyramids, as Djedefre (Abu-Rawash) and Neb-ka (Zawyet el-Aryaman) but remained unfinished. The last Pharaoh Shepseskaf, erected a monument as a large stone sarcophagus in Saqqara. Continue reading