We had our weekly meeting today with Dr. Emad Hijazzen, the Commissioner of Petra Archaeological Park & Cultural Heritage, and his able staff. I’d noticed a healthy feline population here at Petra and during our adventures around this Hashemite Kingdom. I asked one of the staff, per their resource inventory: “How many cats to you have at Petra?” He looked at me slyly and quietly said: “Plenty, plenty of cats…” He went on to explain that they’d like to do something about it, but they are beloved and they help keep the place have less unhealthy things. I read into that vectors like rodents, and trash too. Every time I take the garbage to the topless dumpster outside our place in Wadi Mousa I notice many a pair of cat’s eyes following my progress: it is enough to take me back to memories of “playing keeps” at Washington Elementary School (on Lincoln St.). Usually within minutes you can see the sleek-footed predators turned scavengers entering to se what tonight’s faire might be. It is enough to make one think about the Nabataeans and what they had that filled the niche of the contemporaries. It has long been supposed that ancestral cats followed the rodents that followed the grain from the fields as humans were evolving towards crop-production and storage. As I was “raised in a kennel”(and a Terrier kennel at that) I like to point out that was several millennia after the symbiotic relationship between Canis that allowed modern-human to become just that (just ask the archaeologist Martin McAllister and he will love to expound). Anyway, cats were around long before Nabataeans (very pre-N), and had you traveled here 2,000 years ago with your gold, ivory, slaves, spices, smartphones or other valuables you would have seen that they were here at Petra.
One theory recently set forth by an academic (Dr. Steve Simms, Utah State Univ.) re: Bedouin food storage techniques is that they cache food in areas that can only be retrieved exposing oneself to severe physical trauma or death is a kind of prestige factor. A form of “quien es mas macho”? I have a different theory: they’re trying to make it just a little more difficult for the cats to raid their stores: make ‘em work for it.
One of the best photos I’ve seen of cats at Petra is available at: www.flickr.com/photos/angelion_li/5362559015/
more about the archaeology of our furry Felis silvestris catus friends: http://archaeology.about.com/od/domestications/qt/cat.htm
In yesterday's post, in addition to the rababa I forgot to include another instrument from this region: |
| Um-do-Allah: Praise God! |
I have just recently been to Petra and have been wondering how the cats look so well-taken-care-of. In Israel (and many other parts of the world), the cats live up to their "feral" name, yet these cats were clean, looked disease free, and were in the most part, friendly. Why do you think that is? Is it Petra "culture" to take care of them?
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