Great Temple

About Great Temple

The Great Temple is the largest built complex in Petra, covering about 7,560 square metres south of the Colonnaded Street, on the visitor's left just before Qasr al-Bint. Construction began in the second half of the 1st century BC and was probably completed in the early 1st century AD under King Aretas IV. Brown University has excavated it since 1993 under Martha Sharp Joukowsky, and most of what is known about it comes from that work. From the street a monumental staircase climbs to a lower precinct (the lower temenos) ringed by colonnades, then to an upper precinct where the main building stood with four frontal columns about 20 m high, once coated in red, yellow and white stucco. The surprise inside is a small theatron seating about 600 people, decorated with gold leaf and coloured plaster, which has divided scholars: was this a temple or a civic hall for assemblies and ceremonies? The question is still open. Beneath the paving a network of channels and two cisterns of 59 and 327 cubic metres supplied the complex with water. The best-known finds are the elephant-headed capitals, two of them nearly intact alongside hundreds of fragments, and eight carved limestone panels showing deities. To the east lies the Nabataean garden and pool complex, a reminder that the heart of Petra was green and irrigated, not desert.

Where:

Petra, Jordan