3 May 1929 Part 2

[possibly by Agnes Conway]
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Photographed the Siyagh from El Habis, El Habis from El Ma’aisera and the Deir ridge from the latter.  It takes almost a whole morning to take 6 half-plate photographs in different places if it entails setting the thing up afresh each time.  

To the Deir in the afternoon, looking at the Roman houses and cisterns and grasping that the Temple is not a tomb, but has the outline of a horned altar in the niche.  The water channel from the Mountains that feed the row of cisterns is the largest I have seen in Petra.  Dalman’s so-called sanctuary No. 496, which looked like a grave in the distance, is a Syrian arched entrance to a trichinium with a Roman horned altar on the left.  I imagine it must be a house, and is the only one I know with an arched entrance in Petra. The view over the Ghor at sunset was clear and all the Sinai peninsular visible to me for the first time.  The light beyond the black Siyagh was extra-ordinarily beautiful.  

Reference: [unsigned, possibly Conway, A.] 1929 (transcribed by A. Thornton). Petra Exploration Fund Diary. "Business Papers to be Kept", Horsfield Collection Box 8, UCL Institute of Archaeology, 3 May Part 2: 66-67. ​