I spent the summer of 99 on an archaeology dig in Petra, Jordan. I was a student archaeologist on the American Expedition to Petra, with Dr. David "Daoud" Johnson, whom I love, and Dr. Joel "J-dawg" Janetski, whom I don't get along with, as an understatement. I took about 7 rolls of film, naturally, so I thought I'd share a few photos. I hope you enjoy them. Happy viewing! As always, more pictures will follow.

Some of the pictures have nasty lines through them. This is the fault of the bastards at Walmart film processing, who screwed up my film royally and were completely unapologetic, and wouldn't make any compensation for ruining irreplacable film.

Note: All the photos on this page are exclusively owned and copyrighted by Megan Hasting. It is illegal to use these photos in any way without the express permission of the owner.

NEW!

New additions, with explanations and file sizes listed. Click on the links, of course, to see the photos.

The city of Amman, capitol of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, seen from the roof of the Funduk Tyche. (40.4K)

The Roman Amphitheater in Amman. (66.9K)

The village of Umm Sehoum, where we lived, outside Petra and a few kilometres from the town of Wadi Musa. (48.5K)

The view outside my window: Haroun, Mohammed, and Daqlala on camels, with the gate guard (minus his Uzi) on foot. (59.4K)

A pair of goat-hair tents, in the Little Petra valley. The larger, dark brown one was that particular Beduin family's living quarters, and the smaller, lighter tan tent was their shop. (69.3K)

Al-Khazneh! This structure was made famous by the third Indiana Jones movie, the Last Crusade. It was the Grail Temple in the Canyon of the Crescent Moon. Here's the real thing. Al-Khazneh, or the Treasury, was probably a money-changing site in the Street of the Facades. As you walk the back way toward the Street, thru the Siqh, you see the Khazneh through a crack in the sandstone. When you leave the Siqh, you see it straight on, and it is MASSIVE. Look at the tiny people on the steps. Once you're inside the Khazneh, it is unfortunately not full of immortal knights, interesting statues and paintings, and booby traps, but instead is a large square room with a small niche carved in the far back wall. (47.3K, 61K, 51.7K)

The Street of the Facades, as seen from the steps of the Khazneh (56.2K)

Qasr al-Bint! Temple to Zeus, built by the Pharaoh's daughter, as the legend goes. Al-Bint, as we all know, means "of the daughter." It has a much longer, official name, but everyone calls it Qasr al-Bint (45.1K). You can climb up some rather scary steps to the top of the walls, after climbing through a pile of rubble blocking the entrance to the steps, which are steep and treacherous. Some are nearly worn completely away (64.5K).

The Siqh, as seen from halfway up the jebel (mountain), where one of our excavation sites was, a series of Nabatean cyst tombs. (59.4K)

This is for all you camel tassel enthusiasts, and because it's entertaining to see Dr J, the Chair of Anthropology and Archaeology, dressed in a ghalabeeyah and aba, riding a camel (note the unhappy camel's sharp teeth. Camels are evil-tempered creatures who'd as soon spit on you as look at you). (40.9K)

On our way down to the port town of Aqaba, our bus drivier (busses are works of art in Jordan, upholstered in velvet and trimmed in tassels and fringe, and with various icons and pictures dangling from the ceiling) stopped alongside a cliff face and informed us that the valley before us was part of Syria. I'm pretty sure it wasn't, but it was very beautiful so I took a picture. (50.6K)

Here's Aqaba itself. This is the pier at the Royal Diving Center, where we went snorkeling in the Red Sea, which as you can see isn't red at all, but a lovely shade of blue. The coastline opposite is Egypt. The Red Sea borders like four countries. Beautiful place. It's illegal to touch ANY animal or shell or pretty much anything in the water. Ben Pykles, my arch-enemy and a real bastard, promptly grabbed a sea cucumber and squeezed its insides out once he got in the water. Bloody savage. (48.9K, 60.6K)

For those of you who remember your Bible stories, this is Ain Musa, the "Rock of Moses," in Wadi Musa ("Moses's Valley"), way on the opposite end from Umm Sehoum. When the children of Israel were wandering thru the wilderness, they came through Petra. The Nabateans told them to take a hike, and Moses split a rock and a stream issued forth, to give the Israelites water in the desert. The stream still runs with pure water. It's got a building protecting it now, but you can still pick up little pebbles from the stream, and drink the water if you're brave, dangle your feet in it if you're hot. That's Mindy sitting alongside the stream. (46.2K, 49.9K)

And last of the new batch of photos, the beautiful and usually empty pool of the most expensive hotel in Wadi Musa, the Swedish Movenpick Hotel. They had fabulous ice cream, amazing decorations in the lobby, and absolutely unbelievably beautiful rooftop garden (I'll find a pic and scan it soon), and a nice, cool pool with fountains you could sit under. I love that hotel. They didn't even throw us out for swimming in their pool when we weren't guests. (56.4K)

OLD PHOTOS

These are BIG files, usually around 180k, so I didn't clutter up the page. You can click on the description to pull up the picture.

• A cafe in Amman. This is most of the group. I'm the blonde with the ponytail who's not looking at the camera.
• Inside a Beduin tent in the Petra valley. The tent belonged to the brother in law of Haroun, one of our buddies in the village we lived in, Umm Sehoum. His wife cooked for us and his brother Muhammed was a total hottie!
• Shane Walker and Dan Webber being biblical. Note the abas (robes, brown and black in this photo), galabeeyahs (white robes), and khaffiyas (headdresses).
• Me in a cave at Little Petra. The cave was hollowed out of the sandstone cliff about thirty feet up. It's gated off in the back for some reason. Nobody seemed to know why. If I'm looking tired it was because I'd been hiking for 3 hours in 95 degree heat and most of that was uphill.
• Me (looking very small, since Lora took the photo from a platform like 40 feet off the ground) at Qasr al-Bint, the Temple to Zeus at the foot of the mountain that leads to El Deir (The Monastery).
• Me again on the roof of the Tyche Hotel in Amman. We stayed there for a few days before driving down to Petra, and then again a few days before flying back to America. They weren't on water rations! We got to take real showers! (Our village was on water rations, so you could take a submarine-style shower every other day) It was a very nice hotel. With a nightclub in the basement, of course.
• Me once again dancing on the roof of our house in Umm Sehoum. I was just messing about, but someone took a picture. If you're looking for costuming, only my pants (shalwar) are Jordanian in origin. I bought them in Aqaba, they have little elephants all over them. Very cute, very comfy.

Well that's all for now, I hope you enjoyed the photos. Check back for more later.