The Nabataeans or Nabateans (;

Nabataean Aramaic Nabataean Aramaic is the Aramaic variety used in inscriptions by the Nabataeans of the East Bank of the Jordan River, the Negev, and the Sinai Peninsula. Compared to other varieties of Aramaic, it is notable for the occurrence of a number of loa ...

: , , vocalized as ; Arabic: , , singular , ; compare grc, Ναβαταῖος, translit=Nabataîos; la, Nabataeus) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern

Arabia The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plat ...

and the

southern Levant The Southern Levant is a geographical region encompassing the southern half of the Levant. It corresponds approximately to modern-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan; some definitions also include southern Lebanon, southern Syria and/or the Sinai P ...

. Their settlements—most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu (present-day Petra, Jordan)—gave the name ''Nabatene'' ( grc, Ναβατηνή, translit=Nabatēnḗ) to the Arabian borderland that stretched from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. The Nabateans emerged as a distinct civilization and political entity between the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE,Taylor, Jane (2001). ''Petra and the Lost Kingdom of the Nabataeans''. London: I.B.Tauris. pp. 14, 17, 30, 31. . Retrieved 8 July 2016. with their kingdom centered around a loosely controlled trading network that brought considerable wealth and influence across the ancient world. Described as fiercely independent by contemporary Greco-Roman accounts, the Nabataeans were annexed into the Roman Empire by Emperor Trajan in 106 CE. Nabataeans' individual culture, easily identified by their characteristic finely potted painted ceramics, was adopted into the larger Greco-Roman culture. They later converted to

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

during the Later Roman Era.

Name

The original form of the name of the Nabataeans was , which is recorded in Babylonian Akkadian as , and was the "broken" plural form of the Arabic term , meaning "distinguished man." This name underwent two principal evolutions, with the omission of the glottal stop producing the form , and the replacement of by a

voiced palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic no ...

producing the form . The name of the Nabataeans is recorded in Akkadian sources as , , , , , , and . In Latin sources, the name of the Nabataeans was recorded as .

Identity

The Nabataeans were an Arab tribe who had come under significant Babylonian-

Aramaean The Arameans ( oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; syc, ܐܪ̈ܡܝܐ, Ārāmāyē) were an ancient Semitic-speaking people in the Near East, first recorded in historical sources from the late 12th century BCE. The Aramean ...

influence. Some scholars have identified the people named as in Neo-Assyrian Akkadian records and in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' in the Akkadian and Hebrew forms while the Arabic form uses a , and because the former forms possess a which is absent from the Arabic form, as attested by to the discovery of a

Taymanitic Taymanitic was the language and script of the oasis of Tayma, Taymāʾ in northwestern Arabia, dated to the second half of the 6th century BCE. Classification Taymanitic does not participate in the key innovations of Proto-Arabic, precluding i ...

inscription in the Jabal Ġunaym which records the name of the as . The scholar Edward Lipiński has however refuted this rejection by demonstrating that these various forms of the name were derived from an original form , from which the glottal stop was replaced by a palatal approximant, hence producing the Akkadian and Hebrew forms and , while omission of the glottal stop produced the Arabic form .

History

Neo-Assyrian period

The Nabataeans were first mentioned, under the name of , by the

Neo-Assyrian The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...

king Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III, who mistakenly referred to them as an

tribe, although their presence in his list between two other North Arabian tribes, the Ḫagaranu and the Liʾtau, shows that they were an Arabic population. During the 8th to 7th centuries BCE, the Nabataeans were living in the part of the Syrian Desert immediately adjacent to the western border of Babylonia, and at the time of the Babylonian king Marduk-apla-iddina II, some of them were present in Babylonia itself, with his inscriptions recording the existence of a city of Nabatu settled by this tribe. Some of these Babylonian Nabataeans were placed by the Neo-Assyrian king Šarru-kīn II into the service of the governor of Ašipā. The Nabataeans were mentioned again by the Neo-Assyrian king Sîn-ahhī-erība, although his inscriptions do not contain any further information about them. During the 660s and 650s BCE, the Nabataeans were ruled by a chief bearing the Babylonian Aramaic name of Nadnu, reflecting the significant Babylonian cultural influence under which the tribe was. During this period, the Nabataeans were vassals of the Neo-Assyrian king Aššur-bāni-apli, and their neighbours in the Babylonian border region were the Arab tribe of Masʾaya, who themselves lived in the western border regions of Bīt-Amukkani. At one point during the early years of Aššur-bāni-apli's reign, Yawṯiʿ ben Ḥazaʾil, the king of another the Arab tribe of the Qedarites, had rebelled against the Neo-Assyrian Empire, prompting Aššur-bāni-apli to conduct a campaign against the Qedarites. After Aššur-bāni-apli had defeated the Qedarite king Yawṯiʿ ben Ḥazaʾil, the latter fled into the territory of the Nabataeans, who were then living beyond the area of control and influence of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and sought the sanctuary of Nadnu. Due to increased Assyrian influence in the desert as a result of his campaign, however, Nadnu refused to grant refuge to Yauṯaʿ, and he himself instead swore allegiance Aššur-bāni-apli and pledged to pay annual tribute to the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In 652 BCE, the Babylonian king Šamaš-šuma-ukin rebelled against his younger brother, the Neo-Assyrian king Aššur-bāni-apli. Shortly after, in 651 BCE, Nadnu also rebelled against Aššur-bāni-apli and made contact with Šamaš-šuma-ukin, who offered captives from

Sippar Sippar ( Sumerian: , Zimbir) was an ancient Near Eastern Sumerian and later Babylonian city on the east bank of the Euphrates river. Its '' tell'' is located at the site of modern Tell Abu Habbah near Yusufiyah in Iraq's Baghdad Governorate, som ...

to his envoys at

Kutha Kutha, Cuthah, Cuth or Cutha ( ar, كُوثَا, Sumerian: Gudua), modern Tell Ibrahim ( ar, تَلّ إِبْرَاهِيم), formerly known as Kutha Rabba ( ar, كُوثَىٰ رَبَّا), is an archaeological site in Babil Governorate, Iraq. ...

. Although the Qedarites had supported Šamaš-šuma-ukin in the war which opposed Šamaš-šuma-ukin to Aššur-bāni-apli as result of this rebellion, there is no information available regarding the role of Nadnu's involvement within this conflict. According to letters sent to Aššur-bāni-apli by the Assyrian general Nabȗ-šum-lišir who served in the region of the south-west border of Babylonia at the time of Shamash-shum-ukin's rebellion, a caravan which had left the territory of the Nabataeans was attacked by one Ayakabaru son of ʿAmyaṯaʿ of the Masʾaya tribe, with only one of its members managing to escape and reaching a fortified Assyrian outpost. Following the complete suppression of the Babylonian revolt in 648 BCE, while the Assyrians were busy until 646 BCE conducting operations against the Elamite kings who had supported Shamash-shum-ukin, the southern Phoenician cities and the kingdom of Judah seized the opportunity and rebelled against Assyrian authority. By this time, most of the Nabataeans had moved into the steppe regions of the Syrian Desert, more specifically in the north-east of the Palmyrena region, where Nadnu's Nabataeans, along with the Qedarites led by their chiefs Abyaṯiʿ, Ayammu, and Yuhayṯiʿ ben Birdāda, took advantage of the situation to conduct raids against the western borderlands of the Neo-Assyrian Empire ranging from the Jabal al-Bišrī to the environs of the city of Damascus, and were able to intensify their pressure on the areas of the Middle Euphrates and of Palmyrena. Once the Assyrian war in Elam was complete, in 645 BCE Aššur-bāni-apli attacked the Qedarites and the Nabataeans during a three-months campaign with the goal of subjugating the Arabs permanently. The Assyrian armies first attacked from Ḫadattâ, passing through the desert between Laribda, Ḫuraruna and Yarki before reaching Azalla after defeating the joint forces of the Qedarites, Nabataeans, and another tribe, the Isammeʾ, in the region between Yarki and Azalla; the Assyrians then proceeded from Azalla to Quraṣiti, where they attacked Yuhayṯiʿ ben Birdāda, who fled, captured his mother, sister and family, many prisoners, as well as donkeys, camels, sheep, and goats, and seized the tribe's idols, and dispatched them all through the Damascus road; finally, the Assyrians marched out from Damascus till Ḫulḫuliti, and from there carried out their final attack on the Arabs near the Mount Ḫukkurina, where they captured Abyaṯiʿ and Ayammu. Due to the Assyrian campaign, the Qedarites rebelled against Yuhayṯiʿ and handed him over to the Assyrians. Some time after the campaign against the Qedarites was complete, during the later 640s BCE the Assyrians conducted a campaign against the Nabataeans, who were then living around the Wādī Sirḥān or to its immediate south. During this campaign, the Assyrian army destroyed the settlements of the Nabataeans and captured Nadnu, his wife, his children, and large amounts of booty. Nadnu's son, Nuḫuru, was able to escape before willingly surrendering to Aššur-bāni-apli, who appointed him as the new king of the Nabataeans.

Neo-Babylonian period

The Nabataeans appear to not have pressed against the Transjordanian region during the period which oversaw the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its replacement by the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and the Canaanite kingdoms of Palestine were strong enough to resist the Arabs once the region had come under Babylonian hegemony. In the 6th century BCE, the Nabataeans were living in the northwestern part of the Arabian peninsula to the south of the Wādī Sirḥān, possibly in the region of Taymāʾ and al-Jawf, where they neighboured the Canaanite state of

Edom Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and east.N ...

, and where, according to a 6th century BCE inscription from the Jabal Ġunaym, they had engaged in war against the people of the oasis of Taymāʾ. After the Neo-Babylonian king Nabû-kudurri-uṣur II annexed the Canaanite kingdoms of Judah in 587 BC and of Ammon and Moab in 582 BC, and the later Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus campaigned through Edom in 553 BC, the resulting power vacuum in Transjordan allowed the Arabs of the Syrian desert, including the Qedarites and the Nabataeans, to expand into these former states' settled territories close to the desert, including across southern Transjordan and Palestine until the Judaean hills, where they remained throughout the existence of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and cohabited with the sedentary Ammonite, Moabite, and Edomite populations, with whom these Arab incomers mingled over several generations.

Achaemenid period

When Kūruš II conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BC, the Arab populations of the Syrian desert and of North Arabia, including the Qedarites, as well as the desert routes going into Mesopotamia from these regions, became part of his

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Achaemenid Empire. Thanks to the Achaemenid Empire's multinational structure and its policy of tolerance and the end of any independent polities within Transjordan and Palestine, these Arab groups became integrated into the Persian Empire's economic, administrative, and military systems, with this process also being driven by the development of trade in Arabia as well as the military activities of the Achaemenid kings due to which warriors from all the populations ruled by their empire, including those from the Arab peoples, required their enrollment into the Achaemenid army. Thus, in 480 BC, camel-riding Arab units participated in the Achaemenid king Xšayār̥šā I's invasion of Greece, and Arab units of the Achaemenid army also participated in the empire's overseas and coastal military activities in 410 and 386 BC. Achaemenid rule over the Transjordanian Arabs lasted until Egypt under

Amyrtaeus Amyrtaeus ( , a Hellenization of the original Egyptian name Amenirdisu) of Sais, is the only pharaoh of the Twenty-eighth Dynasty of EgyptCimmino 2003, p. 385. and is thought to be related to the royal family of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (664� ...

rebelled against Persian rule and embarked on anti-Persian activities in Palestine, Phoenicia and Cyprus at the same time that the Persian Empire was itself facing a number of internal crisis which greatly weakened it. In this situation, Persian rule broke down in Transjordan, which became independent.

Hellenistic period

The Nabataeans remained independent after the Macedonian conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by

Alexander III of Macedon Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to t ...

and during the time of the Hellenistic states established by the Diadochi. The first mention of the Nabataeans during the Hellenistic period dates from 312/311 BCE, when they were attacked at Sela or perhaps at Petra without success by Antigonus I's officer Athenaeus in the course of the Third War of the Diadochi; at that time Hieronymus of Cardia, a

Seleucid The Seleucid Empire (; grc, Βασιλεία τῶν Σελευκιδῶν, ''Basileía tōn Seleukidōn'') was a Greek state in West Asia that existed during the Hellenistic period from 312 BC to 63 BC. The Seleucid Empire was founded by the ...

officer, mentioned the Nabataeans in a battle report. About 50 BCE, the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

historian Diodorus Siculus cited Hieronymus in his report, and added the following: "Just as the Seleucids had tried to subdue them, so the Romans made several attempts to get their hands on that lucrative trade." They wrote a letter to Antigonus in

Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...

letters, and Aramaic continued as the language of their coins and inscriptions when the tribe grew into a kingdom and profited by the decay of the Seleucids to extend its borders northward over the more fertile country east of the Jordan river. They occupied Hauran, and in about 85 BCE their king Aretas III became lord of Damascus and Coele-Syria.

Nabataean Kingdom

Petra was rapidly built in the 1st century BC, and developed a population estimated at 20,000. The Nabataeans were allies of the first Hasmoneans in their struggles against the Seleucid monarchs. They then became rivals of the Judaean dynasty, and a chief element in the disorders that invited Pompey's intervention in Judea. According to popular historian Paul Johnson, many Nabataeans were forcefully converted to Judaism by Hasmonean king

Alexander Jannaeus Alexander Jannaeus ( grc-gre, Ἀλέξανδρος Ἰανναῖος ; he, ''Yannaʾy''; born Jonathan ) was the second king of the Hasmonean dynasty, who ruled over an expanding kingdom of Judea from 103 to 76 BCE. A son of John Hyrcanus, ...

. It was this king who, after putting down a local rebellion, invaded and occupied the Nabataean towns of Moab and Gilead and imposed a tribute of an unknown amount. Obodas I knew that Alexander would attack, so was able to ambush Alexander's forces near Gaulane destroying the Judean army (90 BC). The Roman military was not very successful in their campaigns against the Nabataeans. In 62 BCE, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus accepted a bribe of 300 talents to lift the siege of Petra, partly because of the difficult terrain and the fact that he had run out of supplies.

Hyrcanus II John Hyrcanus II (, ''Yohanan Hurqanos'') (died 30 BCE), a member of the Hasmonean dynasty, was for a long time the Jewish High Priest in the 1st century BCE. He was also briefly King of Judea 67–66 BCE and then the ethnarch (ruler) of J ...

, who was a friend of Aretas, was despatched by Scaurus to the King to buy peace. In so obtaining peace, King Aretas retained all his possessions, including Damascus, and became a Roman vassal. In 32 BCE, during King

Malichus II Malichus II (Nabataean Aramaic: ''Malīḵū'' or ''Malīḵūʾ'') was ruler of Nabatea from 40 to 70 AD. Malichus' reign is sometimes perceived as a period of declining Nabataean power, but this view depends in part on Nabataea having contro ...

's reign, Herod the Great, with the support of Cleopatra, started a war against Nabataea. The war began with Herod plundering Nabataea with a large cavalry force, and occupying Dium. After this defeat, the Nabataean forces amassed near Canatha in Syria, but were attacked and routed. Cleopatra's general, Athenion, sent Canathans to the aid of the Nabataeans, and this force crushed Herod's army, which then fled to Ormiza. One year later, Herod's army overran Nabataea. After an earthquake in Judaea, the Nabateans rebelled and invaded Judea, but Herod at once crossed the Jordan river to Philadelphia (modern Amman) and both sides set up camp. The Nabataeans under Elthemus refused to give battle, so Herod forced the issue when he attacked their camp. A confused mass of Nabataeans gave battle but were defeated. Once they had retreated to their defences, Herod laid siege to the camp and over time some of the defenders surrendered. The remaining Nabataean forces offered 500 talents for peace, but this was rejected. Lacking water, the Nabataeans were forced out of their camp for battle, but were defeated in this last battle.

Roman period

An ally of the Roman Empire, the Nabataean kingdom flourished throughout the 1st century. Its power extended far into Arabia along the Red Sea to Yemen, and Petra was a cosmopolitan marketplace, though its commerce was diminished by the rise of the Eastern trade-route from

Myos Hormos Myos Hormos ( gr, Μυὸς Ὅρμος "Mouse's Haven") was a Red Sea port constructed by the Ptolemies around the 3rd century BC. Following excavations carried out recently by David Peacock and Lucy Blue of the University of Southampton, it is ...

Coptos Qift ( arz, قفط ; cop, Ⲕⲉϥⲧ, link=no ''Keft'' or ''Kebto''; Egyptian Gebtu; grc, Κόπτος, link=no ''Coptos'' / ''Koptos''; Roman Justinianopolis) is a small town in the Qena Governorate of Egypt about north of Luxor, situated un ...

on the Nile. Under the '' Pax Romana'', the Nabataeans lost their warlike and nomadic habits and became a sober, acquisitive, orderly people, wholly intent on trade and agriculture. The kingdom was a bulwark between Rome and the wild hordes of the desert except in the time of Trajan, who reduced Petra and converted the Nabataean client state into the Roman province of Arabia Petraea. By the 3rd century, the Nabataeans had stopped writing in Aramaic and begun writing in

instead, and by the 5th century they had converted to Christianity. The new Arab invaders, who soon pressed forward into their seats, found the remnants of the Nabataeans transformed into peasants. Their lands were divided between the new Qahtanite Arab tribal kingdoms of the Byzantine vassals, the Ghassanid Arabs, and the Himyarite vassals, the

Kingdom of Kinda The Kingdom of Kinda ( ar, كِنْدَة الملوك, Kindat al-Mulūk, Royal Kinda) also called the Kindite kingdom, refers to the rule of the Bedouin, nomadic Arab tribes of the Ma'add confederation in north and central Arabia by the Banu Aki ...

in North Arabia. The city of Petra was brought to the attention of Westerners by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1812.

Legacy

The Nabataeans are mentioned under the name of in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' . The Roman author

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ' ...

also listed the Nabataeans under the name of along with the (Qedarites) in his .

Biblical

The Nabateans appear in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Yīšmāʿēʾl, himself the son of ʾAḇrāhām and Hāgār, In the Bible, Yīšmāʿēʾl's eldest son Nəḇāyōṯ is given prominence due to the rule of primogeniture, with Yīšmāʿēʾl's second son Qēḏār also being given some level of prominence due to being the second-born son, making him the closest of Yīšmāʿēʾl's sons to the one standing for primogeniture.

Islamic

The tradition of claiming descent from Ibrāhīm's son ʾIsmāʿīl, called "genealogical Ishmaelism," was already present among some pre-Islamic Arabs, and, in Islamic sources, ʾIsmāʿīl is the eponymous ancestor of some of the Arab peoples of north-west Arabia, with prominence being accorded to his two eldest sons, Nābit () or Nabīt () (Biblical Nəḇāyōṯ) and Qaydar () or Qaydār ((; Biblical Qēḏār), who lived in eastern Transjordan, Sinai and the Ḥijāz, and whose descendant tribes were the most prominent ones among the twelve tribes of the Ishmaelites. According to Islamic tradition, the Islamic prophet

Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the mo ...

is believed to have been a descendant of ʾIsmāʿīl through either Nābit or Qaydār depending on the scholar. According to the scholar Irfan Shahîd, genealogical Ishmaelism was academically viewed with suspicion due to confusion in the Islamic period which led to ʾIsmāʿīl being considered as the ancestor of all Arabian tribes. According to Shahîd, genealogical Ishamelism in its original variant is instead more limited and applicable to only some Arab tribes.

Culture

Many examples of graffiti and inscriptions—largely of names and greetings—document the area of Nabataean culture, which extended as far north as the north end of the Dead Sea, and testify to widespread literacy; but except for a few letters no Nabataean literature has survived, nor was any noted in antiquity.

Onomastic Onomastics (or, in older texts, onomatology) is the study of the etymology, history, and use of proper names. An '' orthonym'' is the proper name of the object in question, the object of onomastic study. Onomastics can be helpful in data mining, ...

analysis has suggested that Nabataean culture may have had multiple influences. Classical references to the Nabataeans begin with Diodorus Siculus; they suggest that the Nabataeans' trade routes and the origins of their goods were regarded as trade secrets, and disguised in tales that should have strained outsiders' credulity. Diodorus Siculus (book II) described them as a strong tribe of some 10,000 warriors, preeminent among the nomads of Arabia, eschewing agriculture, fixed houses, and the use of wine, but adding to pastoral pursuits a profitable trade with the seaports in frankincense, myrrh and spices from

Arabia Felix Arabia Felix (literally: Fertile/Happy Arabia; also Ancient Greek: Εὐδαίμων Ἀραβία, ''Eudaemon Arabia'') was the Latin name previously used by geographers to describe South Arabia, or what is now Yemen. Etymology The term Arabia ...

(today's Yemen), as well as a trade with

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

in bitumen from the Dead Sea. Their arid country was their best safeguard, for the bottle-shaped cisterns for rain-water which they excavated in the rocky or clay-rich soil were carefully concealed from invaders. Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's ''Kitab al-Tabikh'', the earliest known Arabic cookbook, contains a recipe for

fermented Fermentation is a metabolic process that produces chemical changes in organic substrates through the action of enzymes. In biochemistry, it is narrowly defined as the extraction of energy from carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen. In food p ...

Nabatean water bread (). The yeast-leavened bread is made with a high quality wheat flour called ''samidh'' that is finely milled and free of

bran Bran, also known as miller's bran, is the hard outer layers of cereal grain. It consists of the combined aleurone and pericarp. Corn (maize) bran also includes the pedicel (tip cap). Along with germ, it is an integral part of whole grains, ...

and is baked in a

tandoor A tandoor ( or ) is a large urn-shaped oven, usually made of clay, originating from the Indian Subcontinent. Since antiquity, tandoors have been used to bake unleavened flatbreads, such as roti and naan, as well as to roast meat. The tandoo ...

Language

Historians such as Irfan Shahîd,

Warwick Ball Warwick Ball is an Australia-born Near-Eastern archaeologist. Ball has been involved in excavations, architectural studies and monumental restorations in Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. As a lecturer, he has been involved wit ...

, Robert G. Hoyland, Michael C. A. Macdonald, and others believe Nabataeans spoke Arabic as their native language. John F. Healy states that "Nabataeans normally spoke a form of Arabic, while, like the Persians etc., they used Aramaic for formal purposes and especially for inscriptions." Proper names on their inscriptions suggest that they were ethnically Arabs who had come under Aramaic influence, and the Nabataeans had already some trace of Aramaic culture when they first appear in history.

Religion

The extent of Nabataean trade resulted in cross-cultural influences that reached as far as the Red Sea coast of southern Arabia. The gods worshiped at Petra were notably

Dushara Dushara, (Nabataean Arabic: 𐢅𐢈𐢝𐢛𐢀‎ ''dwšrʾ'') also transliterated as Dusares, is a pre-Islamic Arabian god worshipped by the Nabataeans at Petra and Madain Saleh (of which city he was the patron). Safaitic inscriptions imply he ...

and Al-‘Uzzá. Dushara was the supreme deity of the Nabataean

Arabs The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

, and was the official god of the Nabataean Kingdom who enjoyed special royal patronage. His official position is reflected in multiple inscriptions that render him as "The god of our lord" (The King). The name Dushara is from the Arabic "Dhu ash-Shara": which simply means "the one of Shara", a mountain range south-east of Petra also known as

Mount Seir Mount Seir ( he, הַר-שֵׂעִיר, ''Har Sēʿīr'') is the ancient and biblical name for a mountainous region stretching between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba in the northwestern region of Edom and southeast of the Kingdom of Judah. I ...

. Therefore, from a Nabataean perspective, Dhushara was probably associated with the heavens. However, one theory which connects Dushara with the forest gives a different idea of the god. The eagle was one of the symbols of Dushara. It was widely used in Hegra as a source of protection for the tombs against thievery. Nabataean inscriptions from Hegra suggest that Dushara was linked either with the sun, or with Mercury, with which Ruda, another Arabian god, was identified. "His throne" was frequently mentioned in inscriptions, certain interpretations of the text consider it as a reference for Dhushara's wife, goddess Harisha. She was probably a solar deity. However, when the

Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

annexed the Nabataean Kingdom, Dushara still had an important role despite losing his former royal privilege. The greatest testimony to the status of the god after the fall of the Nabataean Kingdom was during the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Rome where Dushara was celebrated in Bostra by striking coins in his name, Actia Dusaria (linking the god with Augustus victory at Actium). He was venerated in his Arabian name with a Greek fashion in the reign of an Arabian emperor, Philip. Sacrifices of animals were common and Porphyry’s De Abstenentia reports that, in Dumat Al-Jandal, a boy was sacrificed annually and was buried underneath an altar. Some scholars have extrapolated this practice to the rest of the Nabataeans.Healey, John F. “Images and Rituals.” The Religion of the Nabataeans: A Conspectus. Boston: Brill, 2001. 169–175. Print. The Nabataeans used to represent their gods as featureless pillars or blocks. Their most common monuments to the gods, commonly known as "god blocks", involved cutting away the whole top of a hill or cliff face so as to leave only a block behind. However, over time the Nabataeans were influenced by

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...

and

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

and their Gods became anthropomorphic and were represented with human features.

Language

The Nabataeans spoke an Arabic dialect but, for their inscriptions, used a form of Aramaic that was heavily influenced by Arabic forms and words. When communicating with other Middle Eastern peoples, they, like their neighbors, used Aramaic, the region's ''lingua franca''. Therefore, Aramaic was used for commercial and official purposes across the Nabataean political sphere. The Nabataean alphabet itself also developed out of the Aramaic alphabet, but it used a distinctive cursive script from which the Arabic alphabet emerged. There are different opinions concerning the development of the Arabic script. J. Starcky considers the Lakhmids' Syriac form script as a probable candidate.Nabataean to Arabic: Calligraphy and script development among the pre-Islamic Arabs by John F. Healey p. 44. However, John F. Healey states that: "The Nabataean origin of the Arabic script is now almost universally accepted". In surviving Nabataean documents, Aramaic legal terms are followed by their equivalents in Arabic. That could suggest that the Nabataeans used Arabic in their legal proceedings but recorded them in Aramaic. The name may be derived from the same root as Akkadian ''nabatu'', to shine brightly.

Agriculture

Although not as dry as at present, the area occupied by the Nabataeans was still a desert and required special techniques for agriculture. One was to contour an area of land into a shallow funnel and to plant a single fruit tree in the middle. Before the ' rainy season', which could easily consist of only one or two rain events, the area around the tree was broken up. When the rain came, all the water that collected in the funnel would flow down toward the fruit tree and sink into the ground. The ground, which was largely loess, would seal up when it got wet and retain the water. In the mid-1950s, a research team headed by

Michael Evenari Michael Evenari (hebr.: מיכאל אבן-ארי, even-ari meaning ''lion's stone''; born as Walter Schwarz 9/10/1904 in Metz - 15/4/1989 in Jerusalem) was an Israeli botanist originally from Germany. Life and career Early life and education ...

set up a research station near Avdat (Evenari, Shenan and Tadmor 1971). He focused on the relevance of runoff rainwater management in explaining the mechanism of the ancient agricultural features, such as terraced wadis, channels for collecting runoff rainwater, and the enigmatic phenomenon of "Tuleilat el-Anab". Evenari showed that the runoff rainwater collection systems concentrate water from an area that is five times larger than the area in which the water actually drains. Another study was conducted by Y. Kedar in 1957, which also focused on the mechanism of the agriculture systems, but he studied

soil management Soil management is the application of operations, practices, and treatments to protect soil and enhance its performance (such as soil fertility or soil mechanics). It includes soil conservation, soil amendment, and optimal soil health. In agricu ...

, and claimed that the ancient agriculture systems were intended to increase the accumulation of loess in

wadi Wadi ( ar, وَادِي, wādī), alternatively ''wād'' ( ar, وَاد), North African Arabic Oued, is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley. In some instances, it may refer to a wet (ephemeral) riverbed that contains water ...

s and create an infrastructure for agricultural activity. This theory has also been explored by E. Mazor, of the

Weizmann Institute of Science The Weizmann Institute of Science ( he, מכון ויצמן למדע ''Machon Vaitzman LeMada'') is a public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, 14 years before the State of Israel. It differs from other Israeli unive ...

Nabatean architects and stonemasons

Apollodorus of Damascus Apollodorus of Damascus ( grc, Ἀπολλόδωρος ὁ Δαμασκηνός) was a Nabataean architect and engineer from Damascus, Roman Syria, who flourished during the 2nd century AD. As an engineer he authored several technical treatises, ...

- Nabataean architect and engineer from Damascus, Roman Syria, who flourished during the 2nd century AD. his massive architectural output gained him immense popularity during his time. He is one of the few architects whose name survives from antiquity, and is credited with introducing several Eastern innovations to the Roman Imperial style, such as making the dome a standard. * Wahb'allahi - a first century stonemason who worked in the city of Hegra. Wahb'allahi was the brother of the stonemason 'Abdharetat and the father of 'Abd'obodat. He is named in an inscription as the responsible stonemason on the oldest datable grave in Hegra in the ninth year of the Nabataean king Aretas IV (1 BCE-CE). * 'Abd'obodat son of Wahballahi - a 1st-century Nabatean Stonemason who worked in the city of Hegra. He is named by inscriptions on five of the grave facades typical of Hegra as the executing craftsman. On the basis of the inscriptions, four of the facades can be dated to the reigns of kings Aretas IV and Malichus II. 'Abd'obodat was evidently a successful craftsman. He succeeded his father Wahb'allahi and his uncle 'Abdharetat in at least one workshop in the second generation of Nabatean architects. 'Abd'obodat is considered to be the main representative of one of the two main schools of the Nabataean stonemasons, to which his father, his uncle belonged. Two more grave facades are assigned to the school on the basis of stylistic investigations; 'Abd'obodat is probably to be regarded as the stonemason who carried out the work. * 'Aftah - a Nabatean stonemason who became prominent in the beginning of the third decade of the first century. 'Aftah is attested in inscriptions on eight of the grave facades in Hegra and one grave as the executing stonemason. The facades are dated to the late reign of King Aretas IV . On one of the facades he worked with Halaf'allahi, on another with Wahbu and Huru . A tenth facade without an inscription was attributed to the 'Aftah sculpture school due to technical and stylistic similarities. He is the main representative of one of the two stonemason schools in the city of Hegra. * Halaf'allahi - Nabatean stonemason who worked in the city of Hegra in the first century. Halaf'allahi is named in inscriptions on two graves in Hegra as the responsible stonemason in the reign of the Nabataean king Aretas IV. The first grave, which can be dated to the year 26-27 CE, was created together with the stonemason 'Aftah. He is therefore assigned to the workshop of the 'Aftah. Nabataean architects and sculptors were in reality contractors, who negotiated the costs of specific tomb types and their decorations. Tombs were therefore executed based on the desires and financial abilities of their future owners. The activities of Halaf'allahi offer an excellent example of this, as he had been commissioned with the execution of a simple tomb for a person who apparently belonged to the lower middle class. However, he was also in charge of completing a more sophisticated tomb for one of the local military officials.

Archeological sites

* Petra and Little Petra in Jordan *

Bosra Bosra ( ar, بُصْرَىٰ, Buṣrā), also spelled Bostra, Busrana, Bozrah, Bozra and officially called Busra al-Sham ( ar, بُصْرَىٰ ٱلشَّام, Buṣrā al-Shām), is a town in southern Syria, administratively belonging to the Dara ...

in Syria *

Mada'in Saleh Hegra ( grc, Ἕγρα), known to Muslims as Al-Hijr (), also known as Mada’in Salih ( ar, مَدَائِن صَالِح, madāʼin Ṣāliḥ, lit=Cities of Salih), is an archaeological site located in the area of Al-'Ula within Medina Provin ...

in northwest Saudi Arabia. * Jabal al-Lawz in northwest Saudi Arabia. * Shivta in the Negev Desert of Israel; disputed as a Nabataean precursor to a Byzantine colony. * Avdat in the Negev Desert of Israel * Mamshit in the Negev Desert of Israel *

Haluza The ancient city of Halasa or Chellous ( gr, Χελλοὺς), Elusa () in the Byzantine period, was a city in the Negev near present-day Kibbutz Mash'abei Sadeh that was once part of the Nabataean Incense Route. It lay on the route from Petra t ...

in the Negev Desert of Israel *

Dahab Dahab ( arz, دهب, , "gold") is a small Egyptian town on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, approximately northeast of Sharm el-Sheikh. Formerly a Bedouin fishing village, Dahab is now considered to be one of Egypt's most tre ...

in South Sinai, Egypt; an excavated Nabataean trading port.

References

Sources

* * * Healey, John F., ''The Religion of the Nabataeans: A Conspectus'' (Leiden, Brill, 2001) (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 136). * * * "Nabat", ''Encyclopedia of Islam'', Volume VII. * *

External links

Hecht Museum - Catalogues , The Nabateans in the Negev

Hecht Museum - Exhibitions , The Nabateans in the Negev

��links on Petra and the Nabataeans
NABATÆANS in the ''Jewish Encyclopedia''

Cincinnati Art Museum
��the only collection of ancient Nabataean art outside of Jordan

��Ancient Desert Agriculture Systems Revived (ADASR)
Petra: Lost City of Stone Exhibition
��Canadian Museum of Civilization
"Solving the Enigma of Petra and the Nabataeans"
''Biblical Archaeology Review''

��Petra Crown {{Authority control Ancient Arabic peoples Tribes of Arabia Arab groups Arabs in the Roman Empire History of Saudi Arabia History of Palestine (region) Ancient history of Jordan Ancient Syria Ancient Israel and Judah Gilead

Name

Identity

History

Neo-Assyrian period

Neo-Babylonian period

Achaemenid period

Hellenistic period

Nabataean Kingdom

Roman period

Legacy

Biblical

Islamic

Culture

Language

Religion

Language

Agriculture

Nabatean architects and stonemasons

Archeological sites

See also

References

Sources

External links