As an educational complement to Petra: Lost City of Stone, a roster of experts will introduce the greater Grand Rapids area to Petra and the Nabataeans - their history, their culture and the archaeology that brought both to light.

At special classes, educator workshops, Noontime Series and evening sessions, archaeologists, historians - even the curator who spent nine years putting Petra: Lost City of Stone together - will discuss excavations of Nabataean sites; Petra's water systems, geology, preservation and national park; the historical context of Petra; Nabataean scrolls and pottery; and traditional Jordanian and Syrian costumes and customs.

The education begins just 15 days after the official April 4 opening for Petra: Lost City of Stone with the first of 11 talks that are part of a special Petra Tuesday Evening Lecture Series.

All 11 talks will be held in the Board Room of the Prince Conference Center at Calvin (where Petra will be housed for the duration of its April 4 to August 15 run at Calvin). All talks are free and open to all, and continuing education credits are available to attendees.

"Petra's Great Temple" will be the topic for the first talk, on Tuesday, April 19 at 7 pm, and the speaker is one of the world's foremost Petra experts: Martha Sharp-Joukowsky, director of the Brown University Center for Old World Archaeology. She heads up the Petra Great Temple Project and is author of numerous books on Petra, as well as former president of the American Institute of Archaeology.

The series continues on Tuesday, April 26 at 7 pm with "Rediscovering Petra, Lost City of the Nabataeans" by David Graf, professor of history at the University of Miami, and then features, on Tuesday, May 3 at 7 pm, a talk on "The Petra Exhibition in International Context" by Glenn Markoe, curator at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the man who spent almost a decade planning and organizing the Petra: Lost City of Stone exhibition.

May's lectures will include Bert de Vries (Calvin professor of history and director of the archaeology minor at Calvin), Widad Kawar (a world-renowned collector, exhibitor, writer and lecturer) and Neal Bierling (a local teacher and archaeologist).

June brings talks on the amazing Petra water system and its gardens, while July will feature Petra's scrolls and its pottery.

In addition to the 11 lectures on Tuesday evenings, Calvin also is planning a special series of seven daytime talks, all scheduled for Wednesdays from noon to 1 pm in the Board Room at the Prince Conference Center.

That series begins on April 13 with a talk on "American Archaeological Work in Jordan" by Pierre Bikai, director of the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan, and "Churches and Scrolls of Petra" by Patricia Bikai, associate director of the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan. She is an archaeologist who has been director of two projects in Petra as well as editor of several Petra books. He is an archaeologist who has been director and administrator of the Petra Church Project and numerous other archaeological site conservation and development projects in Jordan.

On Wednesday, April 20 the focus of the Noontime talk will be on "The Great Temple of Petra - 12 Years of Excavation" Sharp-Joukowsky and on April 27 Graf will speak on "Petra and the Nabataeans."

In May the noontime talks will look at such subjects as Petra's geology, Petra and Hollywood and the heritage and culture of the Bedouins. The series concludes June 1 with photographer Vivian Ronay who will speak on "The Bedouin of Petra."