Nabataean church within the Negev : NPR

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Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly sequence wherein NPR's worldwide group shares moments from their lives and work world wide.

Greater than 1,500 years in the past, an historical Arab folks constructed a Christian church within the Negev desert. Earlier this month, I received to see what stays of it after I was invited to hitch a small group of archaeologists who have been doing pre-dawn excavations close by.

You would possibly know of the Nabataean civilization from its fabulous metropolis hewn from sandstone in Petra, Jordan. An Indiana Jones film was partly filmed there. The traditional Nabataeans have been additionally formidable merchants, trekking the deserts of the Arabian and Sinai peninsulas to ship, amongst different items, fragrant frankincense prized for its use in non secular ceremonies. To assist their lengthy voyages, they constructed caravanserais, cities and church buildings like this one alongside their routes.

The remainder of this long-abandoned oasis metropolis, referred to as Mamshit, has crumbled to its foundations, and the Nabataeans lengthy since vanished as a definite folks.

So I used to be shocked at how intact the baptismal swimming pools have been, regardless of the punishing warmth and sand of the Negev. The smaller pool was for baptizing infants, the archaeologists defined; the bigger, cross-shaped pool for baptizing adults — talking to the transition to Christianity the Nabataeans made, beginning within the 4th century A.D.

Regardless of the early-morning solar beating down on my head, I paused for a second subsequent to the swimming pools. To me, they spoke to the fixed change folks and societies undergo. And in a land traversed by many individuals over millennia, it was a reminder that whereas issues final a very long time, they don't final ceaselessly.

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