Station: [19] Banqueting Room

Banqueting rooms are spaces furnished with couches. Depending on the number of couches, the technical term is biclinium (for two), or triclinium (for three). These rooms were stuccoed and colourfully painted inside and out, so you never saw the bare rock.

Our biclinium is a scaled-down replica of Petra’s famous lion triclinium. The colourful décor was reconstructed in part from the few traces of paint discovered in Petra, but mainly from examples in Alexandria.

People shared meals in these dining complexes. As to the occasions – nobody really knows, and the issue is much debated. The current assumption is that the meals served religious purposes. But neither graves nor temples are regularly found near these dining complexes. However, pools or water basins do tend to be found near them and may have been important for their use.

Our biclinium’s façade, like that of the ancient original on which it’s modelled, is in the Greek style. That’s a special feature and is rare in Petra. Most of the dining complexes lack a proper façade and instead have large openings to allow light into the interior. As well as rock-cut complexes of this kind, there is also evidence of an open-air variety.