Petra

Petra

Lawrence Technological University

November 28, 2016

Al-Khazneh

Allen, Will (photograph)

Single built works

2015

Jordan (nation)

Petra (deserted settlement)

Hellenistic

treasuries (buildings)

rock-cut tombs

Corinthian (architectural style)

View of the Treasury or Al-Khazneh at Petra, Jordan, with Corinthian columns. "The rock city of Petra, and particularly “The Treasury,” building - or “Al Khazneh” as it was called for nearly two millennia before being discovered by the Western world in 1812 by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, who disguised himself as a Bedouin to gain access ... it was built possibly as early as the fifth century BCE by the Nabataeans, a culture of traders who established the city and its Greek-themed architecture as a sort of welcoming overture to their primary trading partners in the Mediterranean ... “One of the things that we’ve discovered relatively recently is that it was determined that for these rock-cut facades, and not just Al Khazneh or The Treasury, all of these were not sculpted from the bottom up, but rather from the top down,” says Corbett. “They [the stonecutters] would identify presumably the surface in the mountain that they thought was ideal for the façade that they wanted to create, and presumably they did have engineers and architects who had pre-planned what they wanted these facades to look like.” Once the rock was selected by the engineers of the day and the site decided upon, the construction itself could take place, which may be the most intriguing aspect of the Petra story,"--The engineering behind a world wonder, by David Walsh, ASME online.

sandstone

Treasury’s façade (24.9 meters wide x 38.77 meters high)

jpeg

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