AMMAN (JT) -- Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities Secretary General Sultan Abu Jaber and former US Ambassador to Jordan Wesley Egan on Friday opened the "Petra: Lost City of Stone" exhibition in the Cincinnati Art Museum.
The exhibition will be open for the public between Sept. 14 and Jan. 30, 2005.
Her Majesty Queen Rania inaugurated the exhibition, the first major cultural collaboration between Jordan and the US at New York's American Museum of Natural History in October last year.
"Petra: Lost City of Stone" is the most comprehensive exhibition ever presented on the ancient city of Petra, and its creators, the Nabataeans.
It features approximately 200 exceptional objects on loan from collections in Jordan, and Europe, and some 25 drawings, 19th century paintings, and prints.
Among the highlights of the exhibition is the reuniting of two halves of stone sculpture dating from AD100 for the first time in more than 1,500 years.
Amongst the key masterworks at the exhibition, are the monumental head of the Nabataean god Dushara, a life-size cast bronze statue of the goddess Artemis, and a marble head of a Roman emperor.
The exhibition is organised by the American Museum of Natural History, the Cincinnati Arts Museum, the Ministry of Tourism, the Department of Antiquities, and the American Centre for Oriental Research in Amman.
The Petra exhibition will subsequently move to several other venues in the United States and Canada.
© Jordan Times 2004
