Petra: Lost City of Stone

The city of Petra was built entirely according to Hellenistic and Roman models but this documentary ignores this and pretends that the Nabateans created the city on their own. Were any actual historians even consulted? The city of Petra was part of the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom and then part of the Roman Empire. The tombs and engineering follow the Roman models presented by the Roman architect Vitruvius whose work has survived, yet the morons on this so called documentary pretend to be astonished at the engineering feats of the Nabateans when they were just copying the Romans and Greeks. No mention is made of the fact that Petra as part of the Roman Empire from 101 A.D. and the people there soon began writing in Greek instead of Aramaic, and by the 5th century they had converted to Christianity. The documentary also fails to mention that the city was destroyed by Moslems in 663 as they swept across the Near East and destroyed everything in their way and forced everyone to convert to their religion.

Worthless documentary. Read the article on Petra on wikipedia instead.

This is he best documentary about Petra and the amazing Nabataeans. Despite their great achievements, the ancient Nabataeans are not well-known in the modern Western world due, in large, to an emphasis on Greek and Roman history in the Mediterranean world. The Nabataeans were a nomadic peoples who settled in the Petra Valley, located in the desert of southern Jordan, and established themselves as successful traders on the Arabian caravan route, gained wealth by taxing the caravans passing through, and became a kingdom with its capital at Petra. The site is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world, known in popular culture as the site of the Holy Grail in Indian Jones and the Last Crusade. This documentary explores the achievements of the Nabataeans, with a focus on their monumental rock-cut tomb and temple facades and a design of an elaborate hydraulic system that brought water into the valley, making it possible for the city to grow and thrive. They were so successful with water engineering that they had a huge park with palm trees and a gigantic pool! This was all accomplished 100 years before the Romans conquered the kingdom in order to gain control of the trade routes. The Romans ruined the city and it declined under their rule.