The Lost City: Johann Ludwig Burckhardt Rediscovers Petra

“I hired a guide at Eldjy, to conduct me to Haroun’s [Aaron’s] tomb, and paid him with a pair of old horse-shoes …

In following the rivulet of Eldjy westwards, the valley soon narrows again; and it is here that the antiquities of the Wady Mousa begin. Of these, I regret that I am not able to give a very complete account: but I knew well the character of the people around me; I was without protection in the midst of a desert where no traveller had ever before been seen; and a close examination of these works of the infidels, as they are called, would have excited suspicions that I was a magician in search of treasures; I should at least have been detained and prevented from prosecuting my journey to Egypt, and in all probability should have been stripped of the little money I possessed, and what was infinitely more valuable to me, of my journal book …

[I was taken to] a spot where the valley seemed to be entirely closed by high rocks; but upon a nearer approach, I perceived a chasm about fifteen or twenty feet in breadth … which is called El Syk … After proceeding for twenty-five minutes between the rocks, we came to a place where the passage opens … On the side of the perpendicular rock, directly opposite to the issue of the main valley, an excavated mausoleum came in view, the situation and beauty of which are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveller … It is one of the most elegant remains of antiquity existing in Syria …