Temple-mausoleum of Al-Khazneh in Jordan. Temple-Mausoleum El Khazneh, Petra, Jordan El Khazneh Petra Jordan

Petra, the new wonder of the world, is usually told as a single complex, and the names of specific objects already escape attention. Everyone who has heard about Petra has also seen photographs of the cyclopean structure of the complex itself, but the name is rarely remembered by any non-specialist. This is a treasury - in Arabic “El-Khazneh”. UNESCO archaeologists have been working here for quite some time and they are in no hurry to announce to the world what kind of object this actually is - a temple, a tomb, a real treasure depository, or all of this together, or something else.

In the 8th century BC. The seventh king of Judah, Amaziah, captured the city and renamed it Ioktel. In the 3rd century BC. Petra became the capital of the Nabataean kingdom. It can be assumed that for a temple or tomb nature itself created convenient place With deep cave in the rock. The ancient craftsmen, working in the 1st century AD, only needed to remove the excess and decorate the facade.
“El Khazneh” - a grandiose facade of pink stone 40 meters high and 24 meters wide - is the first thing a traveler sees when leaving the Siq canyon. The location for construction was not chosen by chance. Perhaps the predecessors of the Nabateans already stored treasures here.

Temple Al Khazneh, Petra, Jordan

Surely, in addition to the main entrance, there were deceptive passages, traps, tunnels in the rocks for the passage of soldiers and the evacuation of treasures; perhaps such tunnels could stretch for many kilometers. If you go around the treasury along the road from the north, you can see numerous entrances to the caves, the vast majority of them are blind, but in ancient times everything could not have been so - time, weathering and earthquakes even change the rocks. Little known fact– several underground floors of the treasury have been excavated. Approaching close to the façade, you can see excavations covered with gratings.

It's hard to say what secrets these floors hold. Unfortunately, access to the premises of Al-Khazneh is closed, probably due to the possibility of collapse and damage to archaeological sites. We have to confine ourselves to an external inspection and conjecture about the purpose of building this grandiose structure. If you carefully examine the façade up close, and the upper parts through binoculars, fragments of completely different states of preservation look amazing: clear column capitals and smooth ribs, polished internal walls contrast sharply with weathered sculptures.

Temple Al Khazneh, (inside view) Petra, Jordan

One of the first explorers of Petra in the 20th century was the Russian archaeologist M.I. Rostovtsev, a world-famous scientist. In his work “Caravan Cities,” he did not express himself definitively either about the time, or about the methods of creating the treasury, or about its exact purpose. He only hypothesizes that this building could have been a temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis or the great Nabatean moon goddess Allat. Rostovtsev also expresses doubts regarding the architectural style, attributing it either to the beginning of the 1st century BC, or to the 3rd century AD.

In the 8th century BC. The seventh king of Judah, Amaziah, captured the city and renamed it Ioktel. In the 3rd century BC. Petra became the capital of the Nabataean kingdom. It can be assumed that nature itself created a convenient place for a temple or tomb with a deep cave in the rock. The ancient craftsmen, working in the 1st century AD, only needed to remove the excess and decorate the facade. The Nabatean kingdom was hereditary, so it is possible that the first function of “El-Khazneh” was precisely the tomb.

The tombs of kings were made all over the world - from China to South America and everywhere, except for the function of a tomb, such objects were both repositories of treasures and places of worship, having a mystical meaning that has not been understood in many ways until now. Historical research confirms that in ancient times, throughout almost the entire Mediterranean, temples, in addition to direct worship and sacrifices, also served as banks, shelters, housing for clergy, and sometimes tombs.

We can say that the treasury was one of the key objects of the city. “El Khazneh” - a grandiose facade of pink stone 40 meters high and 24 meters wide - is the first thing a traveler sees when leaving the Siq canyon. The location for construction was not chosen by chance. Perhaps the predecessors of the Nabateans already stored treasures here. Surely, in addition to the main entrance, there were deceptive passages, traps, tunnels in the rocks for the passage of soldiers and the evacuation of treasures; perhaps such tunnels could stretch for many kilometers. If you go around the treasury along the road from the north, you can see numerous entrances to the caves, the vast majority of them are blind, but in ancient times everything could not have been so - time, weathering and earthquakes even change the rocks. A little-known fact is that several underground floors of the treasury have been excavated. Approaching close to the façade, you can see excavations covered with gratings. It's hard to say what secrets these floors hold.

Unfortunately, access to the premises of Al-Khazneh is closed, probably due to the possibility of collapse and damage to archaeological sites. We have to confine ourselves to an external inspection and conjecture about the purpose of building this grandiose structure. If you carefully examine the façade up close, and the upper parts through binoculars, fragments of completely different states of preservation look amazing: clear column capitals and smooth ribs, polished internal walls contrast sharply with weathered sculptures.

It is difficult to imagine how such objects were built in the rocky desert. In front of the treasury there is the largest concentration of tourists, guides, traders, drovers, and Bedouins. If you ask them how it was possible to carve such reliefs in the rock at a height of 40 meters, without scaffolding, they usually answer evasively that the carvers descended from almost fifty meters on ropes. Maybe this was the case, or maybe they used technologies that are now unknown.

Another hypothesis can be found in the Bible. Genesis 6 says, “At that time there were giants on the earth.” For a person 5 meters high, working with a façade 40 meters high no longer seems completely impossible. On the Internet you can find a more down-to-earth hypothesis - that the facade of the treasury was not carved 2000 years ago by the semi-nomadic Nabatean peoples, but is a remake of the 19th century, carved on the basis of an older lost facade by European or even St. Petersburg masters - in the style of the facade they find many similarities with architecture of St. Petersburg. The purpose of such a substitution could be the desire of the British to attract tourists to completely wild places.

The Nabatean treasury “El-Khazneh” keeps its secrets to this day. The monument is included in the List world heritage UNESCO, archaeological work continues, detailed research reports are available only to narrow specialists, but perhaps the time will come when Al-Khazneh will lift the veil on its many mysteries.

In ancient times, the most prosperous cities were those along trade routes. The city lay among the rocks on the route between Arabia and the Mediterranean, where the caravan route ran through the waterless Arabian desert until it ran into the shady valley of the fertile Siq River, which was particularly distinguished by its grandeur and luxury.

Here ancient people Edom and built the city of Petra (Jordan), completely hewing it out of the rock. Previously, there were more than 800 different places of worship, from temples to tombs, but few have survived to this day. One of greatest secrets ancient world One can consider the incredible El-Khazneh temple, hewn right into a steep rock, a grandiose construction by the architects of antiquity.

Historians believe that the ruler of the Nabataean kingdom decided to build El-Khazneh in the 1st century BC in honor of the powerful goddess Isis. According to another version, it was erected in the 2nd century as the tomb of King Arethas IV Philopatra. There is no reliable information, but there are a huge number of myths associated specifically with the temple. They say that even King Solomon hid his countless treasures here.

Until today, scientists have not understood how the titanic two-tier facade of Al Khazneh was created, reaching a height of more than 40 meters, decorated with colossal columns. It was possible to build forests and carry out work from them, but there is no forest suitable for these purposes for hundreds of kilometers around. Some believe that they carved the El-Hazre Temple by hanging over the abyss on special basket mounts. But how it was possible to achieve that clarity, symmetry and beauty is completely unclear.

The majestic temple of Al-Khazneh jealously guards its secrets, allowing numerous tourists, about half a million of them come here every year, just to touch the monumental creation of their ancestors, giving them the opportunity to get closer to the boundaries of the unknown. But you can only penetrate the building, which is no less colossal inside than outside, but the depths of the secret, sacred meaning remain hidden from view.

How to get there:

There are excursions from some resorts: Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt), Eilat (Israel) and Aqaba (Jordan). For example, from Israel a tour will cost about 200 USD, from Egypt - about 300 USD.
If you want to get there on your own, the closest airport to Petra is in the capital of Jordan - Amman. You can also fly to Damascus (Syria), and then take a taxi to Amman, which will cost about $30. Shuttle buses from Amman they depart from the Wihdat bus station, will take about 3 hours and cost 3 dinars.
It is possible to travel from Egypt to Aqaba (Jordan) by ferry from the port of Nuweiba (130 km from Sharm El-Sheikh), which runs daily at approximately one o'clock in the afternoon. Price – $45. A taxi ride from Aqaba costs about 30 dinars one way, and a round trip will cost 45-50 dinars.

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Temple of El Khazneh is a Hellenistic-era Nabatean temple in Petra in modern-day Jordan. The name of the temple is translated from Arabic as “treasury”.

This is due to the fact that the purpose of the building is unknown, but the Arabs believed that during the time of Moses he kept his treasures here egyptian pharaoh, hence the name. According to another local legend, robbers who attacked caravans hid their treasures in the temple.

The temple is a monumental building carved entirely out of rock in the 1st century. The order façade of the building is 40 meters high and 25 meters wide.

According to one version, the temple was built by the Nabatean king Arethas IV Philopatra as his own tomb. Many researchers suggest that from the very beginning it was a temple of the goddess Isis. No one knows how the temple was built at that time. Before the actual construction of this mausoleum, the builders had to chip away at the surface of the rock. How they did this without special scaffolding also remains a mystery. There are not even trees in this area to climb onto the rock. Many features of the monument indicate that it could have been built by craftsmen familiar with the architectural techniques of Alexandria of Egypt.

Al-Khazneh Temple is widely known around the world thanks to Steven Spielberg's film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and is therefore the most popular attraction in the area.