As we are in Petra already and after we visit the Treasure, we will go and visit the Siq, which means in Arabic the shaft. The Siq is the main entrance to the the ancient city of Petra, it is actually a narrow gorge, that in some places is not larger than 3 m and 1.2 km long and ends in front of the Treasure. While we walk on this path you might feel quite little between this walls as they are quite high, they are between 91 m and 182m so you can feel  little between this walls. This amazing path wasn’t made by water as most canyons this one was made by tectonic forces, just later the water smoothed the path.

Going down the history you might see the caravans coming and going with merchants on this narrow path and see how the city was full of life.

At the entrance of the path there is a huge dam that was reconstructed in 1963 and in 1991 with the propose of rerouting the waters  of Wadi Musa. The Nabateans used to have a similar dam around I AD. When we enter we can see the remainings of a beautiful arch. Unfortunately not much preserved from it but there are lithographs made by Matthew Boulby and David Roberts that you can look for so you can see how  the arch used to look before the earthquake from 1896, when the arch collapsed

Along the path you may see some underground chambers but so far  nobody knows for what they were used. The possibility to be tombs was excluded but  they might be chambers for the guards that may have been defending the path for the merchants.

In 1998 the archeologist uncovered two really big statues that looks like two merchants, they are twice as a life statue.  They are a bit eroded by time but they can still be seen.

I hope you enjoyed walking in the Siq with me and you didn’t felt like the path is to narrow.  I also hope  you could follow me a bit in the history path.