I squeezed through the narrow desert chasm just as the early-morning sun lit up the facade of the majestic Treasury building. The structure, originally a mausoleum, was carved from a red canyon some 2,000 years ago, when the city of Petra was a global trade center and its monuments a fusion of Arab and Greco-Roman cultures.

I squeezed through the narrow desert chasm just as the early-morning sun lit up the facade of the majestic Treasury building. The structure, originally a mausoleum, was carved from a red canyon some 2,000 years ago, when the city of Petra was a global trade center and its monuments a fusion of Arab and Greco-Roman cultures.