On the upper terrace we cleaned the second rock-cut room of the so-called Garden Triclinium from the remains of its modern occupation so that the entire monuments is now completely cleaned. As the first room of that structure, the second one too did not contain any additional hint as to its original use (figs. 15. 16).
Fig. 15: Wadi Farasa East, „Garden Triclinium“. Second rock-cut room (photo: A. Barmasse)
As already indicated in previous years, the absence of loculi or other devices for the deposit of sarcophagi or clearly speaks against the use of the structure as a tomb. Further, the sliding traces beyond the threshold of the door that separated the two rooms (Fig. 16) shows that this door was regularly used, an other argument for the profane use of the structure. About three quarter of the second room are executed in the best Nabataean carving technique indicating that the room once must had been covered by painted stucco.
Fig. 16: Wadi Farasa East, „Garden Triclinium“. Door between rooms (photo: A. Barmasse)
The last part of the room, however, is done in a much less careful technique (Fig. 15) sharply contrasting with the good carving of the other part. Most probably the enlargement of the room is due to a later reuse of it, as this an other area of massive Medieval occupation.
Fig. 17: Wadi Farasa East, Garden Triclinium (photo: A. Barmasse)
In front of the „Garden Triclinium“ the space of what could be call the podium of the structure was cleaned down to the natural rock (Fig. 17). The rock surface shows traces of stone extracting and quarrying and we can, therefore, presume that the needed building material for the monuments under study was extracted in the immediate neighbourhood. In this area (trench 6 on fig. 1) a fragmented Greek inscription was found (Fig. 18). According to the shape of the letters the inscription dates to the Byzantine area and may be a funerary inscription mentioning the name of the deceased in the first line (Auxola[os]?).
Fig. 18: Greek inscription from space in front of „Garden Triclinium“ (photo: S. G. Schmid)
