Venue
Cincinnati Art Museum
953 Eden Park Drive
Cincinnati, OH 45202
For information:
(513) 639-2995 or 1-877-472-4CAM, toll free
Dates
Sept. 14, 2004 through Jan. 30, 2005
Museum Hours
Tuesday-Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Wednesday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Monday Closed
Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s days
Fees
This exhibition requires an admission fee. Tickets are $12
for adults, $6 for children 6 to 18, and free for Museum
members and school groups.
General admission to the Museum and its permanent collections
is free, made possible by a gift from The Lois and Richard
Rosenthal Foundation.
Exhibition Organizer Petra is co-curated by Glenn Markoe, Curator of Classical
and Near Eastern Art and Art of Africa and the Americas,
Cincinnati Art Museum; and Craig Morris,
Senior Vice President, Dean of Science, and Curator, Division of Anthropology,
American Museum of Natural History. The exhibition was conceived by the
Cincinnati Art Museum.
This exhibition is organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum
and the American Museum of Natural History, New York,
under the patronage of Her Majesty
Queen Rania
Al-Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Air transportation generously
provided by Royal Jordanian.
Exhibition Sponsors at the Cincinnati Art
Museum Presenting Sponsor: Cinergy Foundation Supporting Sponsors: The Otto M. Budig Family Foundation; Mary
Lynn and Thomas M. Cooney; Frisch’s Restaurants and Gold Star Chili, Inc. Education Partners: The Andrew Jergens Foundation; Dr. Haifa
Fakhouri, Arab American and Chaldean Council; Muller Architects;
Helen B. Vogel
Foundation, W. Roger
Fry, Trustee; and August A. Rendigs, Jr. Foundation, W. Roger Fry,
Trustee. Media Sponsors: The Cincinnati Enquirer; Time Warner Cable and WVXU
91.7 FM Official Airline: Delta
About Petra and the Nabataeans
Located near the Jordan Rift Valley at the crossroads of international
trade routes, Petra was one of the most influential and prosperous
commercial centers
in antiquity. The forbidding desert was transformed by the Nabataeans
into a bustling metropolis with monumental tombs carved directly
into the red
sandstone cliffs and thousands of other structures including temples,
burial chambers,
funerary banquet halls, residences and theaters. Through a complex
system of water channels and reservoirs, skilled Nabataean engineers
developed
and maintained
an elaborate network of damming, terracing and irrigation that allowed
them to
maximize the agricultural potential of the surrounding plateau. The
development of Nabataean writing coincided with and facilitated urbanization,
and
the rich cultural life of the city reflected a confluence of Eastern
and Western
styles
and traditions. From the first century B.C. through the third century
A.D., Petra prospered. A massive earthquake in A.D. 363 destroyed
much of the
city, and,
although partially revived after that, Petra was no longer the economic
powerhouse it had been. Much of the technological infrastructure
that had made life
in Petra possible fell into disuse, and political and religious changes
in the
ancient
world led to the eventual abandonment of the city in the seventh
century A.D.
From its rediscovery by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt
in 1812, Petra, with the mystery and splendor of its rock-carved
architectural
ruins, its savage
beauty and the variegated color of its cliff faces, has been a source
of deep fascination for Westerners. It became a major pilgrimage
site for
19th-century European and American artists and other travelers and
it
continues to enthrall.
It was even used as a location for the popular 1989 feature film
Indiana Jones
and the Last Crusade.
Exhibition Sections in Petra: Lost City
of Stone Petra: Lost City of Stone features more than 200 objects, dating
from the first century B.C. to the sixth century A.D., and is
divided into
the following
12
sections:
The Introduction offers visitors a breathtaking
view of the Treasury seen through the Siq, the narrow gorge that
led
traders into Petra, conveyed by a
re-creation
of the Siq and a stunning 10-foot-high color image of the spectacular
façade
of the Treasury, or the Khazneh, the Greek Hellenistic royal
tomb that is Petra’s
most famous monument.
Petra Rediscovered illustrates the city’s rediscovery by Burckhardt
in 1812 and subsequently by European and American travelers through a selection
of 19th-century paintings, drawings and prints by artists
including David Roberts,
William Bartlett, Edward Lear and Frederic Church. Among
the highlights in this section is Church’s famous large-scale oil painting,
El Khasné,
Petra (1874).
The People of Petra examines the origins of the Nabataeans, a group of
Arabian nomads who began settling in Petra sometime in the third
century B.C. and who
had acquired control of the ancient incense and spice trade throughout
the Arabian Peninsula by the first century B.C. This section features a number
of objects
related to the Nabataeans, including a striking gravestone with
a stylized male head whose style provides evidence that the Nabataeans interacted
with the kingdoms
of southern Arabia. Other highlights include several inscribed
plaques with Nabataean dedications. Found throughout the Eastern Mediterranean,
Nabataean inscriptions
testify to the widespread cultural presence of this people.
Caravans and Commerce explores how the Nabataeans
built a commercial empire, as Petra evolved into a bustling
hub of international
commerce and culture. Highlights
of this section include a recently discovered column
capital with elephant heads, demonstrating the growth of trade with Asia and
the influence
of India, and a
beautiful stone incense burner that documents the
extent of Nabataean trade.
Petra: Crossroads of the Ancient
World,
an 8-minute-long film created especially for the exhibition,
offers visitors a brief
cultural history of the city, as
well as an examination of how the more than 800
tombs honoring Nabataean ancestors were literally cut into
the rock using a unique
process.
The film also highlights
the ingenious methods the Nabataeans developed
to manage and store water.
City of Stone examines the architecture,
engineering and artistry of the Nabataeans, who created a spectacular
city of elaborately carved freestanding temples and
nearly 3,000 tombs, dwellings, banquet halls,
altars and niches, many cut into the rose-colored sandstone
cliffs of southern Jordan. A settlement whose streets
and architecture sprawled along winding gullies
and up steep rock faces, Petra and its environs boasted as
many as 20,000 residents at its height, around A.D.
50. In order to sustain fertile crops, lush gardens
and an impressive system of pools and reservoirs, the Nabataeans
developed a sophisticated system of public
waterworks. Petra’s aqueduct system is estimated to have carried about
40 million liters (12 million gallons) of fresh spring water per day, enough
to sustain a modern-day American population of more then 100,000. Visitors in
this section will get a sense of the actual scale and grandeur of Petra’s
rock-cut monuments as they stand before a 26-foot-wide montage of panoramic views
of the city and its magnificent and captivating ruins, projected onto three 6-foot-high
screens. Among the highlights of this section are examples of the interlocking
ceramic water pipes used to carry water to the city from springs several miles
away, and spectacular objects exemplifying the Nabataeans’ rock carving
skills, including a relief carving of a standing eagle and a recently reassembled
sculpted garland frieze from one of Petra’s major
temples.
Daily Life offers visitors a glimpse into
what day-to-day life was like for Petra’s
inhabitants. Recent archaeological work has helped
document the lives of the merchant and ruling elites; the
stories of ordinary
Nabataeans have yet to be
told. Among the exquisite pieces on view in this section
is an elaborately carved Roman marble vase, or cantharus,
with panther-shaped
handles that is the largest
and finest of its kind to survive from classical antiquity.
Other highlights include a selection of jewelry, including
bracelets
and earrings of gold and
silver; a beautiful terracotta plaque with musicians
depicting both ancient instruments and the music makers themselves;
and a
collection of elegant, finely painted
Nabataean ceramics, which are exceptional for their
thin-walled, porcelain-like delicacy, illustrating how Nabataean
pottery flowered
from the mid-first century
B.C. through the first century A.D. This section of
the exhibition also examines Nabataean architecture and features
a sculpted limestone
niche or window frame
as well as a selection of interior decorative stuccowork
from temples and private residences.
Icons of the Gods focuses on the religious
world of the Nabataeans, which drew upon the religious traditions
of many surrounding regions—north Arabia,
Edom, Syria and Egypt. Worship of the heavenly bodies was central to Nabataean
religion and figures of the zodiac became popular in Nabataean architecture.
Highlights in this section include the two halves of an important ancient Nabataean
statue that have been reunited for the first time in more than 1,500 years. The
sculpture, a statue of Nike, or Winged Victory, holds atop her head a disk with
the bust of the goddess Tyche, the Nabataean goddess of fortune, in its center,
surrounded by the 12 symbols of the zodiac. Originally built into a wall in the
temple of Khirbet et-Tannur, this statue broke when the building collapsed, probably
during the cataclysmic earthquake in A.D. 363. Other highlights include eight
impressive blocks depicting figures of the zodiac from a temple frieze at Khirbet
ed-Dharih that was also toppled by the earthquake; a monumental 2,100-pound sandstone
bust of Dushara, Petra’s primary male deity; a striking portable alabaster
eye idol of al-‘Uzza, Petra’s primary female deity, that reveals
the geometric essentials of the goddess’s timeless
representation; and a rare relief sculpture representing
the actual cult statue
of Qaws, a Nabataean
male deity worshipped at Khirbet et-Tannur.
Under Roman Rule examines the influence
of Rome on Petra, which came under the control of the Emperor
Trajan in A.D. 106
and remained under Roman rule for the
next three centuries. A major highlight
in this section is a nearly life-size bronze statue of the
Greco-Roman goddess, Artemis, the
only surviving
statue
of its type from Petra, and an example
of the many now-lost large sculptures that adorned the main
streets and public squares of
Petra during the
Roman era.
Other highlights are a classical Roman
altar with Nabataean inscription, illustrating the melding
of belief systems in Petra and a marble
head of the
Roman statesman
Aelius Caesar.
The Great Earthquake describes the violent
earthquake of A.D. 363 that wreaked considerable damage to
Petra, from which the
city never fully recovered, and
features a timeline of earthquakes that
occurred within a 400-kilometer (250 mile) radius of Petra
from the first century B.C. to the
eighth century
A.D.
The Byzantine Era explores the history of
Petra in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., when Petra became
an important center
of Christianity within the Byzantine
realm. Highlights in this section include
a portion of a sixth-century A.D. marble pulpit from a Byzantine
church called the Blue
Chapel, newly restored
and reassembled
from ancient fragments, and a sixth-century
A.D. scroll fragment, written in cursive Greek, that is part
of an extensive will of a wealthy
man
named Obodianus,
dictated from his sickbed.
Through a montage of contemporary photographs,
Petra Today details ongoing archaeological
research and conservation projects.
