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Saturday, June 25, 2005

THE PETRA EXHIBIT at Calvin College is profiled by the Northwest Indiana Times:
One Tank Trip: Grand Rapids, Mich
Travel back to a Middle East metropolis in Grand Rapids, Mich.

BY JANE AMMESON
Times Correspondent

This story ran on nwitimes.com on Saturday, June 25, 2005 1:04 AM CDT

Travel back several millenniums to "Petra: Lost City of Stone," an exhibit at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., about 2-1/2 hours northeast of Munster.

Petra, once a major Middle East metropolis carved out of red sandstone cliffs (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed here), stood at the crossroads of the silk and spice trade routes. Considered a major exhibit with 200 artifacts including a life-size bronze cast of a Roman goddess never displayed before, this is Petra's last stop in the U.S.

Petra is where the Nabataeans built temples, tombs, houses, altars and aqueducts and became one of the major metropolitan outposts of its time, home to some 20,000 people. During its prime, in the century or so before the birth of Christ, the city was considered the wealthiest and the Nabataean empire included parts of Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

[...]

It looks pretty accurate, apart from the first line: I don't think Petra has existed for several millennia.

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