By Marilyn Bauer
Enquirer staff writer

Two thousand years ago, the 2,100-pound bust of the storm god, Dushara, was carved into the rock-cut facade of the southern Jordanian kingdom of Petra.

Masons using crude implements fashioned the Hellenistic-style likeness over the entrance to Qasr al-Bint, Petra's main temple.

Next month, Dushara will be installed in the Cincinnati Art Museum as part of the multimillion-dollar exhibition, Petra: Lost City of Stone. The show, which opens Sept. 14, is the first cultural exchange between the United States and Jordan, as well as the historic reunification of ancient artifacts that have been apart for centuries.

Last year, Dushara was removed from a makeshift cement throne over the doorway of a tiny museum by a team of museum experts from Cincinnati using fine conservator's chisels. Four stories up the side of a cliff, the supreme deity of the Nabataean culture had been a victim of the elements. Excavated 30 years ago, it required countless hours of conservation before taking his place in the Petra show.

Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers visited the ground-breaking exhibit, which closed Tuesday at the American Museum of Natural History. More than 200 objects, including a life-size cast-bronze statue of Artemis, a limestone pulpit from a sixth-century Byzantine church, and the recently discovered frieze from a Nabataean temple, are being seen for the first time outside of Jordan.

The treasured artifacts are now being packed up for their trip to Cincinnati for the Midwestern premiere of the show.

Associate registrar Laura Morse files a condition report as the "Petra: Lost City of Stone" exhibition is taken down at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on Thursday. (Gannett News Service, Jonathan Fickies) (Gannett News Service photo)

"This fabled site, carved out of the rose-red sandstone cliffs of Southern Jordan and the people who created it, the Nabataeans, will come to vivid life in this exhibition," said Timothy Rub, the Cincinnati Art Museum's director.

"Just as they have in New York, Cincinnati audiences will marvel over the splendid artifacts, many more than 2,000 years old ... and the eloquent story they tell about this civilization"

Cincinnati holds the most extensive collection of Nabataean sculptures outside of Jordan, which came from excavations done in 1937 at the site of Khirbet et-Tannur. The finds of the excavation were divided between the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Jordan Archaeological Museum in Amman.

Petra unites the highlights of the two collections, which contain some of the most important works of Nabataean art in existence.

For the first time since its first-century creation, the limestone likeness of Nike the Greek goddess of Victory owned by the Cincinnati Art Museum and her wheel of the zodiac surrounding the bust of Tyche, the goddess of prosperity, owned by the Jordanian museum, have been brought together as originally intended.

"They fit together like a glove," said Chris Williams, the art museum's Chief Preparator, who is in New York to lead the four-week deinstallation of the exhibition. "After 2,000 years the two pieces of the statue just clicked together. It was amazing."

De-installation a huge task

As monumental as the coming together of the countries may be, the task of tearing down and re-installing an exhibition of this proportion is equally gargantuan.

CROSSROADS

The story of Petra: A once-vibrant crossroads Petra is the story of the remarkable transformation of the Nabataeans, who evolved from nomads to city dwellers in a relatively short period of time, said Glenn Markoe, co-curator of the show and Cincinnati Art Museum's curator of antiquities. "They built - literally carved from the rock - one of the great urban complexes of the ancient world." The Nabataeans were Arabian nomads who began settling in Petra sometime in the third century B.C. They gained control of the ancient incense and spice trade throughout the Arabian Peninsula by the first century B.C. Merchants, traders, architects and engineers, the Nabataeans built a commercial empire, as Petra evolved from a dusty outpost in the Jordanian desert into a major nexus of international trade with 20,000 inhabitants. For four centuries the city grew wealthy from the sale of frankincense and myrrh from ports-of-call as far away as India and Rome. As the population grew, the Nabataeans, also master engineers, harnessed water from various parts of the Rift Valley using a series of clay pipes laid throughout the city. Petra underwent periods of Hellenistic and Byzantine influence, occupation by the Romans and a massive earthquake in 363 A.D., from which the city never recovered. Petra was eventually claimed by the desert until 1812, when Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt rediscovered the city and published a book with intricate drawings of his experience at the site, Travels in Syria and the Holy Land.

Take, for example, the nearly 4-foot-tall bust of Dushara.

"It was halfway up the side of a mountain," Williams said. "We brought him down with human strength - down to the steps built by the Nabataeans 2,000 years ago. You are walking the crate down these steps and when you look to the side you realize the drop is straight down."

Dushara was wrapped in Velora, very soft, nearly indestructible foam, then lowered into a custom crate that includes spaces for the special nylon lifting straps that are used in installation. The straps stayed attached to the bust during the transport from Jordan, so that when the crate was opened in New York, the bust was ready to be attached to a museum-made gantry (a tripod-mounted device used to lift heavy objects).

Dushara was lifted and lowered over the course of two hours, then set safely on a steel platform.

"Dushara is most vulnerable when he is in the air," Williams said. "But we bought brand new straps to move him from New York to Cincinnati, and we will probably replace them halfway through."

The New York museum's high ceilings made it easier to maneuver Dushara than it will be in Cincinnati. In New York, the team was able to maneuver him up over the partition wall that acts as a backdrop to the bust, then down to his platform. In Cincinnati, where ceiling height is considerably lower, Williams said they will use a cantilever to get the god into place.

Tim Martin, who designed the exhibitions for both New York and Cincinnati, said he used architectural blocks, simulating pillars, to put the pieces in dramatic context.

"I used distressed steel that resembles beams," he said. "They're hollow, metal columns that evoke the Hellenistic and Roman influences on the city."

But it is not only these large steel columns or the limestone statuary that provide a challenge to Williams and his team of six preparators, three registrants and three couriers. The smaller items, some as delicate as a first-century child's ring the size of a button, also require special handling.

"We use dust-free, latex-free gloves to handle the smaller objects," Williams said. "Almost every piece is crated individually. First we make a bed from Pliacre (epoxy) and while it is wet, we quickly place the object, covered in Saran Wrap, into the form, creating an impression. Everything is tested by the conservators to see if it's(giving off gases) that are not good for it. The mold is then covered with moleskin and the object is placed in the mold for transport."

Williams anticipates that the show's reinstallation in Cincinnati will take about a month, requiring the assistance of 15 full-time workers, including curator Glenn Markoe, who created the exhibition alongside the American Museum of Natural History's Craig Morris.

"Most of our time will be spent creating a report after we have checked each item," Williams said. "We spend a lot of time examining an object, noting any changes that have occurred. There are dishes that were reconstructed at the archeological site that are so thin you can't believe they are here."

If you go

What: Petra: Lost City of Stone
Where: Cincinnati Art Museum, 953 Eden Park Drive
When: Sept. 14, 2004 to Jan. 30, 2005; tickets on sale now
Cost: $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and college students, $6 for children 6 to 18 and free for children under 6.
Information: 721-2787 or visit www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org for more information.

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E-mail mbauer@enquirer.com