opportunity to present at TEDx body I
admit this is my first time speaking to
an audience all of Italians so I hope
you’ll bear with me but I am very happy
about the choice of the topic of desert
I think it’s an interesting topic to
explore and it gives me an opportunity
for me to share my research which is an
archaeological excavation in a desert
land and really reveals how humanity has
dealt with the desert environment
I work in Petra which is in Jordan and
it’s located in the southern desert
right on the edge of the Great Rift
Valley along the Arabian desert and in
today the climate is such that there’s
only about 100 millimetres of rainfall
each year so it’s very dry and the a lot
of the water gets lost through
evaporation or just running off into the
valley so very little of it actually
stays in the land and all of the
indications that we have from the
studies of the ancient of ancient Petra
is that the rainfall was about the same
then as it or today as it is then so
thinking about a very little rainfall
now as you can see here Petra is located
in a valley that’s surrounded by
sandstone and limestone mountains and
the sandstone is created by layers of
settlement sediment and this is in
various colors we have purple and blue
and white and yellow but the pedometer
color is red which has led to the
now petra has three features that are
that’s very famous for people tend to
know if they know petra at all they know
about these one of these is the seek
this
seek is a natural gorge that functioned
as the formal entrance into Petra but it
was created by wind and water erosion
and it runs about two kilometres into
through the rock and ends with are the
Nabataeans they they placed this
monumental facade right at the end of it
so it’s a very dramatic entrance into
the city now this is called the Hosny
actually has natal firown’ the treasury
of the Pharaoh but that is a title from
folklore it there’s no route there’s no
actual connection it was never a
treasury it was actually a funerary
monument a funerary temple and many of
you probably recognize it it’s entered
popular lore as the place where Indiana
Jones discovered the Holy Grail in one
of its movies but this monument is not
seems to have stopped working there we
go
it’s one of hundreds of these rock rock
cut facades all around the valley of
Petra and I’ve just show you a couple of
my favorites if I showed you all of them
would be the here all night this one is
the we refer to as the royal tombs and
then here’s just common family tombs
this is the palette of the Corinthian
tomb and this is the largest it’s called
Adair because it was you which means a
monastery and it was used as a monastery
in the Christian era now part one of the
reasons before have after have seen all
of these funerary monuments people came
to talk about petra and call it a city
the dead but it’s a much more than just
this necropolis much more than these
tombs there is an entire city in the
valley and that city was formed by or
was able to be formed because it’s
situated right on the crossroads of the
caravan routes that came out of Arabia
carrying it frankincense and myrrh which
were in great demand in the
Mediterranean world including in Rome
and so the peoples of that we’re living
in Petra who had originally been a
migrant population they exacting control
over this crossroads and were able to
build up a wealth they charge taxes and
so they’re able to build up a wealth and
created this their city which became a
political economic and also a ceremonial
center for the navigating ‘dom 1st
century BC 1st century AD now it’s
estimated that there were about 30,000
people living in Petra but it’s really
just a rough estimate because only 2% of
Petra not even 2% of Petra has actually
been excavated or uncovered so we’re
really just getting a glimpse of what
the city was all about and when you look
at the environment you might wonder well
how is this possible you have this
desert does arid land how is it possible
for a large population to have lived
here where did they get the water for
the people for their animals for the
irrigation of their crops and the answer
is in Springs there were perennial
springs in the hillsides behind Petra I
mean is the Arabic word for spring
so there’s i’m musa i only moon i’m
brock and then there’s a fourth one
that’s further to the north called i’m
dip today and the Nabataean people they
were able to make use of the spring
which produced sufficient amount of
water supplemented by the rainwater for
the population the thing is though that
these are outside of the valley the
Nabataeans one thing they had to do
because when there was rain there would
be these great flash floods they had to
build dams and they cut this tunnel
through the mountain so I divert the
flash floods to prevent it from creating
disasters in the city itself and they
cut about twenty five thousand meters of
channels into the rocks to carry the
water from the springs down into the
city and to the places where they needed
and wanted it these channels are cut
into the stones so they run along the
topography of the land and then when
they wanted to to cross places where it
wasn’t convenient for those cut channels
they’ve created pipelines so they use
these segments of ceramic tubes to
connect along and carry the water to
wherever they need it and they even
though instead of just it’s not all just
practical function you see a lot of
elaboration use of fountains for that
with the water the one this one picture
shows a lion and the water came in from
the back of his head and spewed out of
his mouth but because of that water and
his head has now been eroded away and so
we we don’t get to see that and the
other picture here shows a water channel
and it’s running under the legs of what
was a camel carved into the mountainside
and in front of the can wall is a man
who’s leading the camel these were
buried this the bottom half of the
sculpture was buried under the sand and
in the 1990s when the Jordanians
excavated to find the original pavement
in the seat they uncovered the preserved
feet out of both the camel
and the man now the Nabataeans also had
to store water so they had cisterns and
reservoirs we see them everywhere around
the valley to store and keep all the
water so that they would have sufficient
for the dry months okay so because of
this water we were able to have the city
you have the seek you have the rock cut
facades and then you have this water
system which Petra is so famous for but
I can say one more thing one additional
element that famous that that Petra is
now famous for or should be famous for
this is the result of fieldwork I did I
started in 1998 as a graduate student
and I chose the this Terrace in the
middle of the city to investigate it was
believed for a hundred years that this
was a marketplace Petra is a center of
trade there must have been a marketplace
why not this big Terrace in the middle
of the city but the our team got to work
in a team archeology is always a team we
have I have other professional
archaeologists students and also people
from the local village the padule the
Bedouins and in the first field season
we were able to realize that this
Terrace was never a market place there
was no evidence of it ever being used as
a market place the southern half of the
terrace was occupied by a grand pool a
monumental pool 46 metres 23 metres two
and a half metres deep you can think of
an Olympic sized swimming pool to try to
imagine this but this pool had an island
in the middle of it and the island had a
pavilion on it
so from this recurrent reconstruction
here done by our architectural artist
you can get an idea of what we think
this island looked like it would have
been a great place to have banquets it
would have also been
a very good place to be able to have
private discussions because nobody could
be standing around listening to you the
island pavilion had wide doors on all
four sides so that whoever was inside
would have a view across the water
surrounding the island and then also a
view to the north across the terrace and
to the the city on the north side of the
city and and the mountains there so
wonderful expensive views everywhere we
dug we found channels wrap circling
around the pool dropping down to the to
the terrace next to the pool and
channeling out across the terrace and as
a and with further investigations we
found that that Terrace was in fact a
garden we found pathways and plantings
and in fact we know from studies of the
soil from the botanical remains found in
the soil that this Terrace was planted
with palm trees so you have to use your
imagination here and just and imagine a
grove of palm trees on this Terrace with
the pool behind it so this pool and
garden was part of a larger complex
right in the middle of the city and this
is a phenomenon of the 2nd and 1st
centuries BC where palaces in the
Hellenistic world next door in Judea for
example would have gardens and pools as
part of the palace complexes so the
Nabataeans they had there they made sure
that they had their own garden and pool
as something that would be expected for
the royalty to have however in this case
because of the desert environment and
imagine if you were somebody on one of
these caravans traveling for days to the
desert and then you stopped in Petra you
went walked through the sea you saw all
these water channels and fountains but
then as you wander down the middle of
the city
you saw the
Oasis and artificial Oasis this would
have been very impressive you would have
imagined that the Nabataeans were
Masters of the desert how did they were
they able to not only store and
transport the water they needed but they
were able to actually create a surplus
something that could be actually wasted
on display and luxury in this garden the
garden itself is a kind of a visual
propaganda a political statement about
about the conspicuous consumption of
what was most precious not the most
precious resource which was water and
this kind of statement is kind of
propaganda allowed the Nabataeans to be
able to to equate themselves with the
other kingdoms in the area to make them
present themselves as worthy equals to
the Hellenistic kingdoms and then of
Romans did take over Petra and they
changed the trade routes so that they
bypassed Petra which led to the decline
of the city the economic decline of the
city and over time this garden was no
longer maintained it was used for as
agricultural field and became again the
pool B was filled with sand and
essentially just became another part of
you know continued part of the desert so
it’s only through archaeology now 2,000
years later that were able to actually
uncover and realize what these
Nabataeans were capable of that they
were able to become these masters of the
desert and to create a urban oasis in Petra thank you