To: Carolyn who wrote (3112 ) 9/19/2014 12:06:39 AM From: 2MAR$ Respond to of 7987 Ancient Petra, Jordan home of the wealthy trading Naboteans, in around 13:45 covers the "Wadi Musa" (Valley of Moses) and the natural Shara mountain springs they tapped into combined with the ingenuos rain water channel gathering systems. (neccessity is the mother of invention) Estimated together they could hold 11mil gallons supporting human populations up to nearly 100,000 people, they think Petra might have had a population of 30,000 in this arid desert lands. Really fun intro walking thru the narrow canyon entrance that leads you right up & out to the main treasury building, with one of the princes of the Jordanian royal family. (good people, trying to preverve this wonderful past )VIDEO "Evidence suggests that settlements had begun in and around Petra in the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt (1550--1292 BCE). It is listed in Egyptian campaign accounts and the Amarna letters as Pel, Sela or Seir. Though the city was founded relatively late, a sanctuary existed there since very ancient times. Stations 19 through 26 of the stations list of Exodus are places associated with Petra. This part of the country was biblically assigned to the Horites, the predecessors of the Edomites. The habits of the original natives may have influenced the Nabataean custom of burying the dead and offering worship in half-excavated caves. Although Petra is usually identified with Sela which means a rock, the Biblical references refer to it as "the cleft in the rock", referring to its entrance. The second book of Kings xiv. 7 seems to be more specific. In the parallel passage, however, Sela is understood to mean simply "the rock" (2 Chronicles xxv. 12, see LXX). On the authority of Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews iv. 7, 1~ 4, 7) Eusebius and Jerome (Onom. sacr. 286, 71. 145, 9; 228, 55. 287, 94) assert that Rekem was the native name and this name appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls as a prominent Edom site most closely describing Petra and associated with Mount Seir. But in the Aramaic versions Rekem is the name of Kadesh, implying that Josephus may have confused the two places. Sometimes the Aramaic versions give the form Rekem-Geya which recalls the name of the village El-ji, southeast of Petra.[citation needed] The Semitic name of the city, if not Sela, remains unknown. The passage in Diodorus Siculus (xix. 94--97) which describes the expeditions which Antigonus sent against the Nabataeans in 312 BCE is understood to throw some light upon the history of Petra, but the "petra" referred to as a natural fortress and place of refuge cannot be a proper name and the description implies that the town was not yet in existence. The Rekem Inscription before it was buried by the bridge abutments. The name "Rekem" was inscribed in the rock wall of the Wadi Musa opposite the entrance to the Siq, but about twenty years ago[timeframe?] the Jordanians built a bridge over the wadi and this inscription was buried beneath tons of concrete."