Petra - The Urn Tomb

The Urn Tomb was one of the Royal Tombs of Petra. It had two layers of vaults and is thought to be the tomb of the Nabatean king, Malchus II. It was converted into a church by the Byzantines. They flattened the floor of the tomb and put in an altar.
 

The first, and one of the most imposing, is the Urn Tomb, named from the fairly small and insignificant urn at the top of the pediment. The tall, narrow façade towers above the city, its terrace supported by two rows of vaults which emphasise its height. The Bdoul bedouin call these vaults as-Sijn (prison), and the tomb above them al-Makhamah (court of justice). This may be pure myth, or it may reflect a later function of the monument, though not its original Nabataean purpose. Dated to the first half of the first century AD, it could have been the tomb of Malichus II who died in AD 70, or perhaps of his predecessor, Aretas IV, some thirty years earlier. Whoever it was, his burial place was not in a hole cut into the floor, for there is none, but in the central of the three burial chambers carved high in the façade between the columns. The remains of a carved bust can still be seen in this aperture, but those which must have similarly blocked off the two other chambers are missing.

In the mid-fifth century the Urn Tomb was converted into a church, and the cavernous interior still shows signs of the adjustments that were made, in particular the chipping away of the stone that separated the two central recesses to form one large, shallow apse. On the far left of the rear wall, a painted inscription in Greek records the dedication in 446/7 of this erstwhile tomb as a place of Christian worship: 'In the time of the most holy Bishop Jason this place was dedicated... to Christ the Saviour.'

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