Lion Triclinium

About Lion Triclinium

The Lion Triclinium is a small Nabataean facade carved into a narrow side gully on the climb to Ad-Deir in Petra, a short stop that everyone on the Monastery staircase passes and many miss. It takes its name from the two large lions carved on either side of the doorway facing the entrance, now so weathered by wind and rain that they take a moment to make out. It dates from the 1st century AD, roughly the middle of the Nabataean period. Its most striking feature is the tall keyhole-shaped doorway, not a design but the result of erosion: a round window above the entrance wore through and merged with it over the centuries. The facade carries a frieze of alternating triglyphs and metopes with a head at each end that has been called Medusa since the early 20th century, though that reading is unproven. Inside is a banqueting hall with three rock-cut benches along the walls and, in a niche to the left of the door, a sacred stone (baetyl). There are no graves: the room was not a tomb but a place for the ritual meals the Nabataeans held in honour of their ancestors or their gods, which is why it is called a triclinium. It lies on the Ad-Deir trail about a third of the way up from the Basin, is entered by seven steps, and you have to scramble over a few boulders in the side gully to stand in front of it.

Where:

Petra, Jordan