Wadi Rum |
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Written by Micah Key and Stephen Langfur |
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There are places on this earth that through some virtuous combination of wind and sky, earth and rock, have a numinous quality all their own. Wadi Rum is one of those places. It is a natural temenos, which bids every visitor to fall silent and just be.
In The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, British lieutenant colonel T.E. Lawrence (later known as Lawrence of Arabia) set down his first impressions of the place as he and his Arab raiders rode into it: Biblically speaking... We are in the land of the Midianites, who were apparently the first people to worship Yahweh. In the account of Exodus 2:11 - 3:1, Moses fled to Midian after killing an Egyptian. Here he married Zipporah, the daughter of a Midianite priest who appears in the Bible under two names: Reuel and Jethro. While tending his father-in-law's flock, he was called by Yahweh (Exodus 3: 1-4):
Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness, and came to God’s mountain, to Horeb. The angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. Moses said, “I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” "Thus the distribution of Midianite painted pottery, from its production center(s) in northern Arabia (Midian) to a wide range of settlements in the Negeb [Negev – SL], the Arabah [Arava], and beyond, fits rather nicely the locale and routes of a people [the Midianites – SL] known for their metalsmithing and caravaneering. The floruit of this distinctive pottery is precisely the era in which most biblical historians (quite independently of this ceramic evidence, which has only recently come to light) would date the Israelite Exodus from Egypt, their sojourn through Midian and Transjordan, and their settlement in Canaan in the late thirteenth and twelfth centuries BCE." Stager 1998)
The Midianites were a nomadic group within a socio-economic class known as shasu in Egyptian documents. The proto-Israelites, no doubt, were also lumped with the shasu. (The root of the word, in Egyptian, may mean to wander to plunder.) These shasu were Beduin-like shepherds and raiders, first mentioned as living in what is today southern Jordan, though they later spread. The Egyptians considered them a threat and a nuisance. A document of Pharaoh Amenhotep III (14th century BC), and another of Ramesses II (13th century), refer to something that can be variously translated as "the land of the Yahweh-nomads" or "the shashu land of Yahweh." Nearby in the same document the land of Seir is mentioned. This was the mountain range in today's southern Jordan, prime sashu territory, which in the 13th century BC became organized as the Kingdom of Edom. Some archaic poems in the Bible refer to Yahweh as coming from Seir/Edom: Nabataeans and others in Wadi Rum
The Nabataeans were the only people to build any lasting monuments in Wadi Rum. The Thamud also made their mark here—literally. Scattered throughout the Wadi Rum area are rock etchings of camels, two-meter high human figures with stumpy arms and legs, as well as graffiti written in their South Semitic script. Wadi Rum and the area around it have played host to human dwellers for ages, yet history has never found a strong foothold here. In the end, it is the shifting sands and the towers of rock which predominate when the last whisper of mostly-forgotten civilizations have faded away.
Upon entering Wadi Rum from the Desert Highway, the building one comes to first is the Visitor’s Center. From here, most excursions into Wadi Rum itself are launched. Just beyond the Visitor’s Center complex, facing it to the southeast, is the set of cliffs dubbed “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.” They are named after T.E. Lawrence’s famous book and not the reverse, as is sometimes claimed. I went straight up the gully into the face of the hill, along the ruined wall of the conduit by which a spout of water had once run down the ledges to a Nabathaean well-house on the valley floor. It was a climb of fifteen minutes to a tired person, and not difficult. At the top, the waterfall, el Shellala as the Arabs named it, was only a few yards away. Its rushing noise came from my left, by a jutting bastion of cliff over whose crimson face trailed long falling runners of green leaves. The path skirted it in an undercut ledge. On the rock-bulge above were clear-cut Nabathaean inscriptions, and a sunk panel incised with a monogram or symbol. Around and about were Arab scratches, including tribe-marks, some of which were witnesses of forgotten migrations: but my attention was only for the splashing of water in a crevice under the shadow of the overhanging rock.
From this rock a silver runlet issued into the sunlight. I looked in to see the spout, a little thinner than my wrist, jetting out firmly from a fissure in the roof, and falling with that clean sound into a shallow, frothing pool, behind the step which served as entrance. The walls and roof of the crevice dripped with moisture. Thick ferns and grasses of the finest green made it a paradise just five feet square. (Lawrence, Seven Pillars, Chapter LXIII)
Today, Ain Shalala looks much as Lawrence saw it, and it is a tranquil place in which to sit and rest. From here, one can contemplate Lawrence’s “echoing and godlike” vistas: the tortured sandstone, smooth granite and the rippled sand of Wadi Rum. They extend into the enigmatic desert beyond, inviting adventurers to come and behold; perhaps to touch something that is larger than themselves. |
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