the capital of Arabia Petraea, was situated between the Dead Sea and the Elanitic Gulf. In the times of the Old Testament history it was called Selah, a word which, like Petra, its Greek name, means "a rock." It is recorded that Amaziah, king of Judah, "slew of Edom in the valley of Salt ten thousand, and took Selah by war, and called the name of it Joktheel unto this day." (2 Kings xiv. 7.) This name seems, however, to have passed away with the Hebrew rule over Edom, for no further trace of it is to be found; and it is still called Selah by Isaiah (xvi. 1). We next meet with it as the Petra of the classical writers. Strabo, writing of the Nabathæans in the time of Augustus, thus describes their capital:—"The metropolis of the Nabathæans is Petra, so called; for it lies in a place in other respects plain and level, but shut in by rocks round about, but within having copious fountains for the supply of water and the irrigation of gardens. Beyond the inclosure the region is mostly a desert, especially towards Judæa." (Geog. xvi.) Pliny more definitely describes Petra as situated in a valley less than two miles (Roman) in amplitude, surrounded by inaccessible mountains, with a stream flowing through it. (Hist. Nat. vi.) About the same period it is often named by Josephus as the capital of Arabia Petraea, with which kingdom it passed under the immediate sway of the Romans in the time of Trajan. In the fourth century it is several times mentioned by Eusebius and Jerome; and in the Greek ecclesiastical Notitiae of the fifth and sixth centuries it appears as the metropolitan see of the third Palestine. From that date not the slightest notice of the city is to be found in any quarter until modern times. It was Burckhardt who first ventured to assume that the wonderful remains in Wady Musa were the ruins of the ancient capital of Arabia Petraea. His view was amply developed in his Travels in Syria, p. 431, published in 1822, and was supported and incontestably established by his editor, Col. Leake. (Leake's Preface to Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, pp. vii.-ix.) The ruined city lies in a narrow valley, surrounded by lofty, and, for the most part, perfectly precipitous mountains. The ancient and more interesting entrance is on the eastern side, through the deep narrow gorge of Wady Syke. A river, or rather mountain torrent, flows through this gorge and passes out into the valley nearly opposite to the point of entrance on the western side. The chief public buildings occupied the banks of the river and the high ground further south, as their ruins sufficiently show. One sumptuous edifice remains standing on the south bank, near the western side of the valley, and seems to have been a palace, rather than a temple. It is called Pharaoh's house, and is thirty-four paces square. A little east of this, and in a range with some of the most beautiful excavations in the mountain on the east side of the valley, are the remains of what appears to have been a triumphal arch. A few rods south are extensive ruins, which probably belonged to a temple, and which contain fragments of columns five feet in diameter. Still further south are other piles of ruins—columns and hewn stones—parts no doubt of important public buildings which occupied what may be called the central parts of Petra. A large surface on the north side of the river is covered with substructions, which probably belonged to private habitations. An extensive region still farther north retains no vestiges of the buildings which once covered it.

The attention of travellers has however been chiefly engaged by the excavations which have more successfully resisted the ravages of time. These excavations, whether formed for temples, tombs, or the dwellings of living men, surprise the visitor by their incredible number and extent. They not only occupy the front of the entire mountain by which the valley is encompassed, but of the numerous ravines and recesses which radiate on all sides from this enclosed area. They exist, too, in great numbers along all the approaches to the place, which in the days of its prosperity were perhaps the suburbs of the overpopulated valley. At the same time they are often seen rising one above another in the face of the cliff to the height of from two hundred to three or four hundred feet above the level of the valley. By far the largest number of these excavations were manifestly designed as places for the interment of the dead; and thus exhibit a variety in form and size, of interior arrangement and external decorations, adapted to the different fortunes of their occupants, and conformable to the prevailing tastes of the times in which they were made. Some consist of a single chamber, 10, 15, or 20 feet square by 10 or 12 in height, containing recesses in the wall large enough to receive one or a few deposits. Others are enriched externally with various ornaments, representing columns of different orders, graceful pediments, broad, rich entablatures, and sometimes statuary, and transforming the base of the mountain into a vast, splendid pile of architecture. The magical effect of some of these monuments is greatly heightened by the rich and various colours of the rock out of which, or more properly in which, they are formed. The mountains that encompass the vale of Petra are of sandstone, of which red is the predominant hue. Many of them are adorned with such a profusion of the most lovely and brilliant colours as it is scarcely possible to describe. Red, purple, yellow, azure or sky blue, black, and white, are seen in the same mass distinctly in successive layers, or blended so as to form every shade and hue of which they are capable—as brilliant and soft as they ever appear in flowers, or in the plumage of birds, or in the sky when illuminated by the most glorious sunset. In fact, it is more easy to imagine than describe the effect of tall, graceful columns, exhibiting these exquisite colours in their succession of regular horizontal strata. They are displayed to still greater advantage in the walls and ceilings of some of the excavations where there is a slight dip in the strata.

Detailed descriptions of the principal monuments have been furnished by Lahoride, Voyage dans l'Arabie-Petree), Robinson (Biblical Researches), and Olin (Travels in the Petrarca. East, from which the above description has been chiefly taken). Interesting notices of Petra may also be found in the respective Travels, Journeys, &c., of Burckhardt, Macmichael, Irby and Mangles, Stephens, Lord Lindsay, and Schubert.