Flashes on Wadi Rum History

Weirdly shaped rocks jutting up from the valley floor, the color of the stone and red sand, and the endless span of sky creates a panorama of strange beauty with an almost ethereal quality scenery unsurpassed in the middle east. This is Wadi Rum, a great valley lying northeast to southeast in the desert of southern Jordan; a vast, silent place that has been named the Valley of the Moon.

Wadi Rum- known as Iram in Nabataean texts that were found at the site, as well as among Arab writers in the Middle Ages- was the site of one of the most famous Nabataean sanctuaries. It continued as a hub of activity long after the region became independent. It appears as a wide, dry and very flat valley, running north to south and bordered by two high cliffs, so steep that they almost form right angles…The archaeological record includes two types of religious complexes.

In the southwest corner of a thrust fault, and dominating the valley for several dozen meters, lies the rock sanctuary of (the goddess) Allat, chosen as a site because of the presence there of the Ain Shallalah spring. At the foot of the cliff-literally- rose a temple, also most likely dedicated to Allat, and a small settlement.

Both were first discovered in 1931 by George Horsfield and were jointly explored between 1932 and 1934 by the inventor and by Father Raphael Savignac. Excavations of the temple below were later undertaken by Diana Kirkbride. After a long hiatus, the project was recently continued, and the exploration has spread to the surrounding area, where sites of Nabataean and Thamoudene graffiti had been found, notably at Rizqeh, south of Rum.

Archeologists are certain that the area of Wadi Rum was one of the earliest inhabited sites in Jordan, and a holy site during Nabataean times. Excavations in the south have uncovered a small village dating from 4500 B.C., and on a hill in the center of the valley there are the remains of a small temple, probably Nabataean and probably built about the first century B.C. there are also slabs of rock throughout the valley with inscriptions in early Thamoudic writing, recording the names of travelers of old who were apparently moved by what Lawrence called this processional way greater than imagination,and who left their mark before vanishing in the vastness of time and the wadi."

Wadi Rum resulted from a great crack in the surface of the earth caused by an enormous upheaval that shattered mammoth pieces of granite and sandstone and heaved them upward in the form of great cliffs. The weatherworn rocks are like pale purple mountains rising out of infinity. As one gets closer to them, their purple color gives way to the tawny hues of sandstone ridges that tower a thousand feet in the air and are topped with domes worn smooth by a constant wind. Overhead the sky is pale and colorless; underfoot, the sand is rust. All around there is emptiness and silence- a silence so great, one can hear it; space so immense, and man is dwarfed to insignificance.

To penetrate the heart of Wadi Rum takes less than an hour from the Desert Highway. It lies in the center of a vast plain between Jebel Ram and Jebel Um Ishrin, almost a mile away. Both are parts of high cliffs which Lawrence described as been like "gigantic buildings along two sides of their street."