Wadi Farasa East

After descending from the High Sacrifice Place along the west face of the Jabal al-Madhbah (see the previous tour), one reaches the point where the Wadi Farasa East begins as a narrow gorge. Crashed boulders and rubble give an idea of the force with which the water masses pour down during heavy rain. The wadi is labeled "East" because there is a parallel western valley that merges with this one further down.
The upper area was named "Gartental" (Garden valley) by the explorer Gustaf Dalman when in spring 1904 he found a secluded idyll of grass fields, broom and oleander bushes between colourful rock faces. This is where the name "Garden Temple" or "Garden Triclinium" comes from for the rock monument with the columned portal, which can already be seen from above.
Rock cut steps to its left descend to the Soldier Tomb complex, which occupies the entire width of Wadi Farasa East. The magnificent mausoleum with three reliefs of standing men on the façade, and the most sumptuous triclinium of Petra on the opposite side were once connected by a courtyard with colonnades. It was entered through the portal of a large two-storey building with several, partly heated rooms. As Stephan G. Schmid, excavations director of the International Wadi Farasa Project (IWFP) wrote, the overall plan of the complex is inspired by palace buildings of the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean region.

When Gustaf Dalman found an idyll of lawns and flowering bushes in the upper section of Wadi Farasa East in the spring of 1904 and therefore called it "Garden Valley", he could not have guessed that there might have actually been a well-kept garden landscape there in Nabataean times. As S. G. Schmid writes in one of the IWFP reports the wadi must have looked like a "paradise on earth" at one time. The green area surrounded by steep rock walls was fed by an ingenious water supply system and protected with dams against flash floods.
During the Nabataean period, it was not possible to look out over the upper valley from the interior (as in the photo above), because the platform was a closed courtyard lined with columns of a presumably two-storey house. In its center there is a 2.40 m deep cistern hewn into the rock, which used to be covered with slabs .
On the photo you can see the remains of the medieval walls to the left of the cistern.

This building was first described by researchers as a garden tomb, then as a garden temple and garden triclinium. The original function is still not clearly evidenced. Archaeologists involved in the long-term International Wadi Farasa Project (IWFP) found out that it was definitely not a burial site and that it was not a temple, but had a secular use. It could have been an inhabited garden house in a park-like area of Wadi Farasa East. The close constructive connection with the large cistern and the corresponding basins, channels and smaller cisterns suggests that the inhabitants of the house were responsible for their maintenance .
The building probably originated in connection with the Soldier Tomb complex, which closed off access to this upper part of the wadi, in the second to third quarter of the 1st century AD.
The 8 m high stone wall next to the garden triclinium belongs to a huge cistern, one of the biggest water collecting reservoirs in Petra.

Steps carved into the rock leading from the Soldier Tomb complex to the higher part of Wadi Farasa East. Top left of the stairs is the Garden Triclinium.

The Wadi Farasa consists of an eastern (1) and a western section (2). On the right, the famous Soldier Tomb complex (3).
"With its sophisticated water supply system and gardens, the combination of sacred areas and spaces for the dead with installations for the living, Wadi al-Farasa East must have once offered a very impressive picture, a kind of paradise on earth, that is often described as an ideal utopia in ancient literature." (S. G. Schmid, p. 344.)
The Soldier Tomb complex, the Garden Triclinium, the cisterns and water pipes and all the installations for protection against flash floods were probably built in the third quarter of the 1st century AD, as part of a comprehensive building programme in Petra. When the earthquake of 363 AD caused severe destruction here as well, the complex facilities were already unused and left to decay. More about this on the image pages.
The Wadi Farasa continues for a long stretch at the foot of the Jabal al-Madhbah. On the western slope of the mountain there are many tomb facades, also staggered on top of each other, and several votive niches. Some of them we present in the last part of this informative photo tour, for example the so-called Renaissance Tomb.