The city of Petra is oriented to the same star that the Kabaa
The main monuments of Petra, the legendary city of the nabateos in Jordan, are oriented towards the solstice and Canopo, the star that guided the caravans by the Arabic Peninsula, like it happens to the Kaaba, in Mecca, according to the astronomer of the IAC Juan Antonio Belmonte.
The investigator of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) explains that, after carrying out works of field in the nabatea city, he considers to Petra “like a wonderful factory for the arqueoastronómicos and arqueotopográficos studies”.
For his study it measured main monuments of the nabatea city - the Treasure, the real Monastery and tombs, among others and after analyzing the data found, for its surprise, that astronomy and “the sagrada” topography were very important to orient the tombs and the temples.
The nabateos were an Arab tribe who inhabited the Southeast of Palestine and Syria, in the border with the Greek world, a pair of centuries before Christ, and founded an empire that extended from the Red Sea to Damascus and Gaza to the deserts of central Arabia.
The astronomer found “surprises pleasant” in Petra, like which one of its more famous monuments, the Monastery, is oriented to the Sun putting in the winter solstice, a little while nails of the annual cycle.
But the investigator found in addition “a suggestive” data on the location to these monuments when detecting that they have the same astronomical orientation that in center main the Kaaba before outside islamizada and turned of peregrination of the Muslims, when it was a pagan sanctuary in which he thought myself that there were about 360 idols, destroyed by Mahoma prophet after conquering Mecca.
“The Kaaba shows to the same alignments that Petra, since the nabateos after all were an Arab tribe, and reinforces what the texts mention on other pre-Islamic monuments”, details Belmonte.
Also another main temple, the one of From Leon the Winged ones, dedicated possibly to the goddess To the Uzza, is oriented towards Canopo, the second star more shining of the sky and that, when the marking the South with relative precision, was used by the caravans to thence orient from Petra towards Mecca and towards the countries of the incense and their final destiny, Saba.
Another “peculiar” data is that both great obelisks of than six meters, excavated more in the mountain in a sample of the ability of the nabateos sculptors, are oriented East-West so that to the dawn and the dusk, and in the equinox, both perfectly they are aligned and its shade “is touched, which surely implied something in the mind of their constructors”.
Source: Agency EFE
I like much to read these curiosities/old monument coincidences, but spectacular he is the one of the pyramid of keops, an alignment that nor the engineers of nowadays…. its height I believe that it was one millionth part of the distance to the sun, etc, etc. soulheroes.com