Moses’ Spring & A Change of Address

Firstly, we’d like to welcome Kate and Bilal Beyhum who joined our little expedition last week. As a special treat, we took them to see the Wadi Mousa spring, the famed rock that Moses allegedly struck twice with his staff to release a torrent of fresh water, as recounted in Numbers 20:11:

“And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with the branch; water gushed in abundance, and the community drank and their cattle too.”

As with most famous biblical landmarks, this particular location of Moses’ spring is hotly contested by another located in Mount Nebo. Nonetheless, it still draws a small crowd every day, and continues to pump forth sweet water that is collected by the locals and channelled into the green valley below.

As for the rock that Moses struck? Well, it is now used mainly as a spot for tourists to pose for their new Facebook profile pictures (as demonstrated by a couple of locals, and Kate & Bilal below):

In other news: we’ve moved to a new place in the Bedouin village. For the first month we stayed just outside the village in a tiny and rather overpriced 1-bedroom flat. Through a succession of happy coincidences, we now find ourselves staying in the massive house belonging to Atallah AlBdoul, in a separate section containing 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and living room. We also have two huge balconies on which to chill and brainstorm. Major thanks to Attallah for allowing us to stay!

And that’s it for this week’s update. We only have 2 and a half weeks left in Petra before going to Amman to start digitising the footage, but till then, I leave you with this lovely image of Tour Guide Touf pointing the way to Petra from our new balcony.

Ciao.

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