“According to tradition the earliest inhabitants of Petra were a race known as the Horites who lived here 5000 years ago. When Esau sold his birthright to his brother for a mess of pottage, he and his followers were said to have come to this country which for centuries was known as ‘the land of Edom.’ When the Israelites were wandering through the wilderness they are said to have come this way and asked the inhabitants of this city to allow them to enter and rest. But the Edomites refused. And Isaiah prophesied that the people of this city would be wiped out of existence. That is what seems to have happened, and for over fourteen hundred years there hasn't been anyone living here. Although in the time of the Queen of Sheba it must have been a city of come two or three hundred thousand people.
Many of Israel's prophets hurled their curse upon Petra. Obadiah said ‘Thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, though thou exalt thyself to the eagle, though thou build thy nest among the stars, yet will I bring thee down from thence saith Jehovah.’”
-Lowell Thomas
“With Lawrence in Arabia” (1919)
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