The treasury with no treasure in it

The Treasury at Petra isn't a treasury. It's a tomb, carved into rose-red sandstone by the Nabataeans more than two thousand years ago, and the name comes entirely from a legend that never had anything to do with what it actually was.

The story goes that an Egyptian pharaoh, fleeing from Moses, hid his gold inside the stone urn carved at the very top of the facade. People believed it enough to shoot at the urn with rifles for generations, trying to crack it open. You can still see the bullet marks today. There was never anything in there but solid stone. The whole city vanished from Western knowledge for centuries too, until a Swiss traveller called Johann Burckhardt talked his way in in 1812 by pretending to be a pilgrim visiting an entirely different tomb.

I painted the facade in watercolour and ink, that rose-coloured stone at the end of the gorge. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: The Treasury, Petra · Travel Poster