Overviews and Gateways

A number of the best introductions to Petra are located in Archaeology.

Angus McIntyre's Petra Site. Includes dozens of beautiful images and a clickable map of the city. Arguably the best images on the net. See also his Jerash.

Homepage of Leigh-Ann Bedal, who digs at Petra. Includes her "The Pool-Complex at Petra" , a page of Faces of Petra and Favorite Images of Petra.

Amazon. Petra : Lost City of the Ancient World by Christian Auge and Jean-Marie Dentzer. I really like this whole series, with its selections from source material in the back, ample illustrations and photography and pocket size. Well, that's my two-cents-worth.

"Petra: A Brief History and Some Photographs." Digitization of a 1973 tourist brochure. The images, though black and white, are quite good. From Al Mashriq, the Levant.

"Petra - Myth and reality" by Philip C. Hammond, with photographs by Vivian Ronay for the Aramco World Magazine 1991.

Petra: Jordan's City in the Rock. Exhibition at the National Geographic Offices in Washington, DC. Includes images of artifacts.

"'Stunning' exhibition on Petra opens in Washington" by George S. Hishmeh for the Jordan Times, December 1998.

Forgotten Wonder: Petra from Alaa K. Ashmawy's Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Overview of Petra, and tourism at Petra by Mahmoud Bakr, in Cairo's English-language edition of Al-Ahram, February 2002.

Web Archive: Focus has a mediocre page on Petra.

World Wonders: Petra. Links to Petra resources.

History

A Brief History of Petra from Petra, the Great Temple Excavation. Brown University team, headed by Martha Sharp Joukowsky, is excavating the Great Temple. Site includes a "A Brief History of Petra", a tour of their excavations and details on their finds.

The Mysterious Nabateans from a History of Jordan on the official Jordanian government's site.

Web Archive: Literatur zu den Nabatäern. Multilingual bibliography.

Ancient Accounts of Arabia, 430 BCE - 550 CE. Includes selection from Herodotus, Strabo, Dio Cassius, Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius. From the Ancient History Sourcebook.