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Petra And The Lost Kingdom Of The NabataeansEditions
Review
Having previously written a very useful guidebook to the area, author Taylor now returns to familiar terrain to give us a more substantial study of the city and the Nabateans who created it. Once nomads, from the South and West of the Arabian peninsula (today’s Yemen) they developed great skills in storing water in giant cisterns in the desert, thereby controlling trade routes from the East and the highly profitable North / South flow of frankincense and myrrh. Having thus become formidable players and great strategists in the Ancient World they took their accumulated wealth and settled in the area of Petra in Southern Jordan: it was here they created their unique city whose greatest monuments are carved from the rock in a range of styles reflecting their itinerant past, a source of wonder in its time, and to this day. Beginning with Alexander the Great, who brushed with the Nabateans but never quite conquered them, this narrative is testament to the to these unjustly forgotten warrior nomads, as Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, John the Baptist and Paul the Apostle could all ruefully confirm. The first wife of Herod the Great, for example, was a Nabatean princess, and her divorce greatly complicated the political situation when Salome did her little dance. - review by Stewart Grimshaw |
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John Sandoe [Books] Ltd |
Inspired by the brilliant photographs taken by author Jane Taylor, I looked back at my own albums to recall a visit to Petra almost 20 years ago and to my astonishment found not a dud snap among them. This, I realised, was less to do with any skills on my part, rather to the fact that the site itself must rank as one of the most photographic venues on the traveller’s atlas. Since Miss Taylor gives a major credit to the Royal Jordanian Airforce in obtaining many of the memorable images, I needn’t feel ashamed of my efforts.
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