Templum Dusaris, Petrae
About
Best-preserved freestanding temple in Petra, built around 30 BCE for Dushara, the Nabataean kingdom's chief god, standing over 75 feet tall at the end of the city's colonnaded street. Nabataean kings funded it in the same building boom that produced Petra's rock-cut Treasury facade. Rome annexed the Nabataean kingdom peacefully in 106 CE, turning Petra into the province of Arabia without a fight. In 117 CE the temple was barely a decade into Roman rule, still the city's religious heart.
What happened here
The building itself is a house for the god, and most people never go inside. Everything public happens on the steps and at the altar in front: an animal led up, examined, killed cleanly, its organs read, the meat divided and eaten. The priest covers his head and a flute player keeps up a noise so no ill-omened word is heard. Worshippers leave what they can afford — a terracotta figure, a coin, a model of the body part they want healed — and the accumulated clutter is periodically cleared and buried on site. On festival days the doors are opened and the cult statue is dressed, garlanded, and sometimes carried out through the streets. The temple also holds money, which is why towns keep their treasury in one.
In ancient writing
- Strabo, Geography 16.4.21
Petra reported at second hand from Athenodorus, who lived there: a rock plateau ringed by cliffs, with springs inside, and a people so orderly they barely go to law.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →