From anywhere in the ancient city of Petra, you can see the same thing: a small white dome, like a pearl, sitting on the highest peak in the desert. It rises 1,353 meters above the ground, glowing against the red sandstone as if someone left a lantern up there so nobody would lose the way. The mountain is called Jabal Harun in Arabic, Mount Hor in Hebrew. And the man supposedly resting beneath that dome is Aaron: Moses's older brother, Israel's first High Priest, and a prophet honored equally in the Torah, the New Testament, and the Quran.
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Prophets & Pilgrims·1/3·1′
The place
Petra
Aaron's Tomb on the Mountain of God
Where three faiths kneel at the same stone — the tomb of the man who loved peace above all things
c. 1407 BC (traditional date of Aaron's death); 4th–6th century AD (Byzantine monastery); 1363 AD (shrine construction)Petra
Moral of the Story
“The man who sought peace above all things — who went to every quarreling pair and whispered reconciliation until they embraced — found his tomb on the one mountain where three faiths that have warred for millennia still kneel at the same stone in silence.”
Characters
A
Aaron (Harun), High Priest and ProphetM
Moses (Musa), his brotherE
Eleazar, Aaron's sonP
Prof. Jaakko Frösén (Finnish archaeologist)S
Sultan Muhammad ibn Qalawun (shrine builder)Source
Numbers 20:22-29, 33:38-39 (Hebrew Bible); Quran, Surah 20:29-32, 7:150 (Aaron and Golden Calf); Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews IV.4.7; Eusebius of Caesarea, Onomasticon (s.v. Hor); Frösén, Jaakko et al. Petra — The Mountain of Aaron, Vols. I-II (Finnish Archaeological Project, Helsinki 2008-2016); al-Masudi, Muruj al-Dhahab (10th century); Avot 1:12 (Hillel on Aaron); Petra Papyrus Inventory 6 (AD 573)