"It was truly a strange spectacle -- a city filled with tombs. One would be inclined to think that the former population had no employment which was not connected with death, and that they had all been surprised by death during the performance of some funeral amenities."
The quote is from French writer Leon de Laborde. The year he penned it, 1830. The abandoned city in question? Petra, in southern Jordan, a monumental ruin that for centuries was forgotten by all but a few Bedouin bandits.
Petra now, as it was when Laborde visited, is still a city of the dead.