Unlike Petra, in which the Nabataeans lived and buried their dead, Piccola Petra was designed to house caravans from Arabia and the Orient, which went as far as Syria and Egypt. In order to make them stop after the crossing of Wadi Rum, the Nabataeans dug before the small caves in the sandstone, then came to build grandiose for the number of caravansmen who stopped there.
Like Petra this site was also “rediscovered” by Johann Ludwig Burckhardt
