BBC (9/1/2023)
“Welcome to Jordan!” a group of kids shouted excitedly, as I stepped out of the car to admire the sun setting over the vast sandstone canyon of Wadi Mujib.
While I stood on the cliff’s edge, awestruck by the mountain ranges stretching to the Dead Sea, a black-and-white hooded wheatear swooped down near me. I wondered how something so delicate could survive in such desolate ravines, fluttering across the arid mountains and building nests in rock crevices.
From my perch, I could see a narrow, serpentine road winding down the ridges and gorges. This route, known as the King’s Highway, or Darb ar-Raseef (“paved road”, in Arabic), is believed to be one of the world’s oldest continuously used roads. For millennia, merchants, pilgrims, warriors and kings travelled north to south through Jordan’s central highlands, and this thoroughfare served as a vital artery connecting ancient kingdoms and empires.
Today, a modern, tarmacked road (officially called Highway 35) sits atop its ancient ancestor. It runs south from Syria along the Jordan River, passing through Roman ruins, Byzantine mosaics, Crusader castles and the ancient city of Petra – effectively revealing the history of Jordan and linking some of its most important historical sites.
“This route was used in the Nabataean period [4th Century BCE to roughly 106 CE], and probably even before that, in the Iron Age,” said Fawzi Abudanah, an archaeologist who has studied the region’s ancient road system.
A road traversing Jordan known as the “King’s Highway” is mentioned in the Bible’s Old Testament as the route that Moses asked permission to cross after leading the Israelites out of Egypt. As Abudanah explained, since there is archaeological evidence showing Edomite, Nabataean, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic presence along much of the current highway, it suggests that this road has been in continuous use since at least the 8th Century BCE. “We keep following the footsteps of our ancestors,” he said (…)
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230109-the-kings-highway-the-road-that-reveals-jordans-history