Leaving footprints on antiquities…priceless

The only thing better than breaking the rules and getting away with it is when it is facilitated by the rule maker. In Petra there is the remains of a Byzantine church with ancient mosaics dating back to 600 AD, very well preserved and kept behind a simple barrier. We are the only ones there and the guy watching this place asks if we would be interested to walk on the antiquities provided we took our shoes off. The offer caught us by surprise so we had to clarify that we heard him correctly. Seriously, we can walk on these thousand year old works of art by peoples long since gone if we go barefoot? We said this of course while we were taking our sandals off. It’s kind of nerve racking to trod on artifacts because you just don’t know if the next step is going to pull up a tile or crack a motif. Then he brings the wet sponge out and starts rubbing some of them to show the brilliant natural colors under the layers of dust. While he’s doing this I thought I noticed a tile actually roll off and he quickly picked it up into his palm. We tiptoe about feeling the tiles beneath our feet taking pictures and video. Talk about trying to take gentle steps. I really wanted to bust out a cartwheel but thought that might be over the top. In the course of our half hour conversation he made a quick comment about losing his job if anyone saw us doing this but we didn’t push him on the details. Apparently this guy had been working with the excavation team for a decade and knew all kinds of interesting facts about the work being done in Petra. He gave us the sales pitch just as we were about to leave so we bought a jar of sand art and a set of postcards from him. We figured the price for walking on the priceless mosaics was well worth the $2.50.