This year a not planned further activity of the IWFP took place. Since several months the Petra office of the Department of Antiquities is carrying out a systematic cleaning of the caves in the Petra area in order to clean them from modern remains. During the cleaning of the so-called Renaissance Tomb at the entrance of the Wadi Farasa East (Fig. 19), only a few meters from our excavation, it became soon apparent that the interior of the rock cut space contains a big number of shaft graves with at least parts of the original covering in situ (Fig. 20).
Fig. 19: Wadi Farasa East, Renaissance Tomb (photo: A. Barmasse)
In order to prevent illicit excavation of these tombs it was agreed with Sulejman Farajat, responsible for the above mentioned cleaning project, to join forces and to excavate and document the tombs. We are very grateful to Sulejman Farajat for this exemplary cooperation and to Mahmoud Muhammad al-B’dool, responsible for supervising the cleaning project of the Department of Antiquities.
Fig. 20: „Renaissance Tomb“, interior after cleaning (photo: A. Barmasse)
This opportunity has to be hailed all the more since so far only a few Nabataean tombs have been excavated more or less in context Bikai/Perry 2001. . The funerary customs of the Nabataeans still remain rather enigmatic, not the least related to the strange testimony by Strabo 16, 4, 26 On this see the controversial discussion by Hackl et al. 2003: 96–98. 615–617; Zayadine 1986: 221; Wright 1969. 14 graves were counted inside the „Renaissance Tomb“, out of which no. 1 (Fig. 22) for sure and no. 12 perhaps did contain two or more burials (cf. fig. 21).
Fig. 21: „Renaissance Tomb“, distribution of graves (drawing: A. Barmasse)
The complete study, including a detailed paleoanthropological analysis of the bones collected will take some time, for the moment we present only a brief summary. All the graves were looted and this most probably already during the Medieval period as is indicated by the important amounts of Medieval pottery found on the surface and inside most of the tombs, such as the jug illustrated on fig. 23. Most of the tombs were constructed as shafts with a kind of shoulders in about half the height of the grave onto which the covering slabs were applied, as can be seen for instance in the case of tomb 1 (Fig. 22).
Fig. 22: „Renaissance Tomb“, tomb 1 after excavation (photo: S. G. Schmid)
On the top of the slabs smaller stones and sand were added in order to completely cover the tomb. In some cases the pottery and other finds collected from beneath the level of the slabs were sufficiently homogeneous in order to allow some further thoughts as to their chronology. As an exemplary case we shall briefly discuss tomb no. 8 (Fig. 24).
Upon the level of the covering slabs, Nabataean pottery was mixed to Medieval sherds (beneath the scale on fig. 24), while beneath the level of the slabs the finds were exclusively Nabataean (upon the scale on fig. 24). The pottery belongs exclusively to phase 3b (last quarter of the 1st century AD) as does a complete lamp of the Negev 1a type. The same picture is provided by other tombs containing enough material. Two of the tombs even contained a tombstone with carved inscription in Nabataean, rather unusual finds as so far no inscribed Nabataean tombstones have been reported for Petra and only a few once from the rest of the Nabataean sphaere of influence L. Nehmé in Lenoble – al-Muheisen – Villeneuve 2001: 128–132. .
Fig. 23: „Renaissance Tomb“, Medieval jug from tomb 3 (photo: S. G. Schmid)Fig. 24: „Renaissance Tomb“, pottery from tomb 8 (photo: S. G. Schmid)
Beside further insight on Nabataean funeral practices, these results are also likely to change the chronology of the entire monument. With most of the graves apparently belonging to the last quarter of the 1st century AD., the „Renaissance Tomb“ must have been constructed towards the third quarter of the 1st century AD. In her architectural study of the Petra monuments, Judith McKenzie compared the „Renaissance Tomb“ to the Sextius Florentinus Tomb and dated both of them in the second quarter of the 2nd century AD according to the inscription on the latter McKenzie 1990: 46–47. 165–167. . However, it has been supposed that the inscription of Sextius Florentinus only belongs to a secondary reuse of that monument Freyberger 1991. and the results from the „Renaissance Tomb“ are likely to confirm that hypothesis and to date back both monuments about half a century.
