We laid the sounding S 3 from the northern half of the entrance of Tomb Br. 24 towards the opposite rock (fig. 1). At the foot of that rock a small, partly plastered, channel comes down from the north leading the rain water and possibly the overflowing water from the reservoir Br. 24 to the cistern D. 19 as suggested by Zayadine and Farajat Zayadine – Farajat 1991: 275. . This cistern is situated a little bit to the west at a lower level of the bedrock in a kind of a small depression. While Dalman called it a pear shaped cistern and even some years ago it was only half filled, the cistern is now completely filled by debris and washed-in material. The western rock of this depression shows on its southern face a very well built niche with a betyl (D. 20). This niche is probably related to the channels and the cistern carrying the so called ‚living water‘, for which the Nabataeans thanked their deity.
About in the middle of the trench we discovered wall 3 running north to south (fig. 21). This wall is thinner (60 cm) then wall 1 and originally also belongs to some built structures in front of Tomb Br. 24. There most probably was a architectural relation between wall 3 and the abutments of arches located on the northern side of the entrance to the tomb, similar to the structures described in sounding S 1.
Fig. 21: Northern Terrace. Sounding S 3 with wall 3 (photo: L. Gorgerat)
Sounding S 3 also provides us with information concerning the entrance of Tomb Br. 24. First, it has to be mentioned, that at the threshold the bedrock was carefully cut out (fig. 22). A few fragments of pavement stones, which were also found in that area, formed a step leading into Tomb Br. 24. The presence of an attic moulding (fig. 23) found in front of the entrance is probably evidence of the rich decoration of the tomb’s entrance. The pottery associated with this building mainly belongs to Schmid’s phase 2c (1st Quarter of the 1st century AD) and ends towards the end of the 1nd century AD
Fig. 22: Northern Terrace. Threshold of Tomb Br. 24 (photo: L. Gorgerat)Fig. 23: Molding from sounding S 3 (photo: L. Gorgerat)
In order to gather some further information on the structures of the Northern Terrace we opened sounding S 5 (fig. 24) which constitutes the junction of S 1 and S 3 (fig. 1). Unfortunately the continuation of wall 3 was missing. A further structure in shape of a rock-cut block was discovered in the southern half of S 5. It seems that it was originally intended to cut this sandstone boulder out of the bedrock. For some unknown reasons this project was abandoned.
Fig. 24: Northern Terrace. Sounding S 5 (photo: L. Gorgerat)
