Dr Zbigniew Fiema

Details of Dr Zbigniew Fiema's Munro Lecture.

The fading glory: Petra in late antiquity

Event details

Date: Thursday 24 October 2013, 5.15pm - 6.15pm

Venue: Meadows Lecture Theatre, Medical School, West Side, Teviot Place, Edinburgh EH8 9AG

Lecture abstract

Petra in southern Jordan, built and inhabited by the Nabataeans, achieved a considerable importance between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD, attributed to their involvement in the long-distance incense trade between East and West.

Spectacular monuments of the Nabataean period in the city always attracted popular interest and scholarly attention. However, the archaeological exploration of Petra in the past 20 years concentrated on the Byzantine period remains. This substantially expanded the knowledge on the later periods in the history of the city, which had remained poorly understood and relatively neglected. Furthermore, the discovery of the Petra Papyri in 1992 provided significant information on the socio-economic standing of Petra in the 6th century.

Despite the economic decline caused by the loss of lucrative trade revenues and the calamity of the AD363 earthquake, the city retained a certain degree of vitality as a provincial capital in the Byzantine Empire. Petra provides the fascinating image of a city whose past glory and the spectacular Christian monuments contrasted with the gradual urban contraction and civic impoverishment. Significantly, Petra does not appear in the Early Islamic historical sources and, ultimately, by the end of the 7th century, the city fell into oblivion.

This lecture will concentrate on Petra in late antiquity (4th-7th centuries AD) through the reconstruction of its late history and the presentation of the most significant monuments, such as the Petra Church and the Monastery of St Aaron, among the others. Additionally, an update on the Petra Papyri will be included.