I made this image just a few minutes before I made the sister image "The Avenue of Tombs". When light begins to fade it fades fast and in the desert it can get dark very quickly.

The tombs aren't the only things to see in this image, zoom in and look at the people, I'm over a half a mile away when I made this image. I can't see most of them with my naked eye. I surely didn't see the Bedouin tent structure high up in the rocks until I had finished stitching the image together and was making final checks when I found it.

The Royal Tombs of Petra were created by The Nabataeans nearly a millennium BCE and some of it looks like it was carved yesterday. The Tombs were carved out of sandstone not built. I can't imagine the engineering it took to carve these monuments/tombs. As I stood at the Byzantine Church in the afternoon light the full color of the sandstone began to show just how beautiful the Royal Tombs are. I was joined by a Bedouin who made me tea and encouraged me to go with him to the Monastery, he promised me it would be worth my time. I never made it there, instead I chose to make this image.

The archeological site known as Petra is incredibly extensive and the 3 days I was there just weren't enough to cover it. I will go back and make it out to the Monastery and report back with an image.