City
Petris
Wadi Musa
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The drawing of Petra on the Tabula looks unfinished: its twin-towered symbol straddles two stretches of road, and the road line runs unbroken straight through it. The Greek geographer Strabo and the Roman writer Pliny describe a city hewn from the rock itself and ringed by further rocks in a stony desert, which suits a name that is Greek for rock. The kings of the Nabataeans resided here, and Pliny places the city where two caravan routes crossed, the source of its wealth. The Emperor Trajan dissolved their kingdom in AD 105. Its theatre, temples and thousands of rock-cut tombs lie at Wadi Musa in Jordan.