IASA Beatrice de Cardi Lecture 3 December 2024 at 6 pm (GMT) by Zoom
From Petra to Hegra: a voyage through Nabataean skyscapes and ritual times
A. César González-García
Institute of Heritage Sciences, INCIPIT, CSIC, Spain
The Nabataeans developed a unique and sophisticated culture from the early first century BC until the annexation by the Roman Empire and even later. Nabataean inscriptions and
classical sources refer to a number of divinities with a possible astral nature, such as Dushara, Al Kutba, Allat, or Al Uzza. All these deities were often represented by blocks of stone (baetyles). It is interesting to analyse how this pantheon could be reflected in their monuments. A statistical analysis of the orientation of Nabataean sacred monuments
demonstrates that astronomical orientations were often part of an elaborate plan and may
reflect traces of the astral nature of Nabataean religion. Petra and other monuments in the
ancient Nabataean kingdom demonstrate the interaction between landscape features and
astronomical events. The famous Ad Deir, for example, has revealed a fascinating ensemble of light and shadow effects that may be linked to much of Nabataean mythology. The final destination of our journey is Hegra, often referred to as the southern capital of the Nabatean kingdom. Here we carried out fieldwork to measure the orientation of more than 110 tombs.
The results show that the tombs were not randomly oriented, but followed a series of patterns, most likely emphasising the skyscape, within the framework of the Nabataean lunisolar calendar and religious festivals.
Antonio César González García is staff researcher at the Institute of Heritage Sciences
(INCIPIT-CSIC, Santiago de Compostela, Spain). He has been doing research in
Archaeoastronomy and Cultural Astronomy for 20 years following a multidisciplinary
research line centred in understanding how the sky was incorporated by past societies in their everyday life, especially how their concept of time, religion and space were fossilised in the orientation and location of their cultic buildings. He has been President of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC; 2017-2023), and he is member of the Council of the International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture (ISAAC; 2022-) and of the organizing committee of IAU commission C5, Cultural Astronomy. Born in Valladolid (Spain, 1973) he holds a PhD in Astrophysics (Rijks Universiteit Groningen, The Netherlands) and has carried out research in several countries in four continents published in nearly 200 publications
To attend the lecture please register HERE
