El-Deir (also Ed-Deir) resembles the Khazneh, but is larger, cruder and more eroded.
The great doorway is around eight metres tall, and the facade as a whole is
approximately fifty metres wide by forty-five tall. The whole structure,
like the Khazneh, has been carved out of yellow sandstone, and the flanking walls
reveal clearly how deep the builders cut into the cliff to create it.

It was however not a tomb, but a building of worship, dedicated to the
Nabatean divinized King Obodias 1st (96-87 BC). El-Deir is misleadingly called
"The Monastery" because it appears to have been used as such during the
Byzantine Christian period when a cross was carved into the wall and the arcosolium reworked.

El-Deir, "The Monastery". 9/13/2000

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