Nabataeans

Al Khazneh, Petra (the Nabataean capital)

The Nabataeans, Arabic (الأنباط) Al-Anbaat, were an ancient trading people of southern Jordan, Canaan and the northern part of Arabia- whose oasis settlements in the time of Josephus gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Syria and Arabia, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. Their loosely-controlled trading network, which centered on strings of oases that they controlled, where agriculture was intensively practiced in limited areas, and on the routes that linked them, had no securely defined boundaries in the surrounding desert. Trajan definitively conquered the Nabataeans and incorporated them into the Roman Empire, where their individual culture, easily identified by their characteristic finely-potted painted ceramics, became dispersed and was eventually lost.

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 no Nabataean literature has survived, nor was any noted in antiquity, and the temples bear no inscriptions. Onomastic analysis has suggested that a Nabataean culture may have embraced multiple ethnicities. Classical references to the Nabataeans begin with Diodorus Siculus ; they suggest that their trade routes and the origins of their goods were regarded as trade secrets, and disguised in tales that should have strained outsiders' credulity. Diodorus described them as a strong tribe of some 10,000 warriors, pre-eminent 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 and myrrh and spices from Arabia Felix (today's Yemen), as well as a trade with Egypt 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.

The extent of Nabataean trade resulted in cross-cultural influences that reached as far as the Red Sea coast of southern Arabia. The gods worshipped at Patra were headed by Dushara and al-Uzza.

Origins

The Nabataean origins remain obscure. On the similarity of sounds, Jerome suggested a connection with the tribe Nebaioth mentioned in Genesis, but modern historians are cautious about an early Nabatean history. The Babylonian captivity that began in 586 BC opened a power vacuum in Judah, and as Edomites moved into Judaean grazing lands, Nabataean inscriptions began to be left in Edomite territory (earlier than 312 BC, when they were attacked at Petra without success by Antigonus I). Petra or Sela was the ancient capital of Edom; the Nabataeans must have occupied the old Edomite country, and succeeded to its commerce, after the Edomites took advantage of the Babylonian captivity to press forward into southern Judaea. This migration, the date of which cannot be determined, also made them masters of the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba and the important harbor of Elath. Here, according to Agatharchides, they were for a time very troublesome, as wreckers and pirates, to the reopened commerce between Egypt and the East, until they were chastised by the Ptolemaic rulers of Alexandria.

The Nabataeans had already some tincture of foreign culture when they first appear in history. That culture was naturally Aramaic; they wrote a letter to Antigonus in Syriac letters, and Aramaic continued to be 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. They occupied Hauran, and in about 85 BC their king Aretas became lord of Damascus and Coele-Syria. Nabataeans became the Arabic name for Aramaeans, whether in Syria or Iraq, a fact which has been incorrectly held to prove that the Nabataeans were originally Aramaean immigrants from Babylonia. Proper names on their inscriptions suggest that they were true Arabs who had come under Aramaic influence. Starcky identifies the Nabatu of southern Arabia as their ancestors. However different groups amongst the Nabateans wrote their names in slightly different ways, consequently archeologists are reluctant to say that they were all the same tribe, or that any one group is the original Nabataeans^[1].

Language

The language of the Nabataean inscriptions, attested from the 2nd century BC, shows a local development of the Aramaic language, which had ceased to have super-regional importance after the collapse of the Achaemenid Empire (330 BC). The Nabataean alphabet itself also developed out of the Aramaic alphabet.

This Aramaic dialect was increasingly affected by the Arabic dialect of the local population. From the 4th century AD, the Arabic influence becomes overwhelming, in a way that it may be said the Nabataean language shifted seamlessly from Aramaic to Arabic. The Arabic alphabet itself developed out of cursive variants of the Nabataean script in the 5th century.

The Hellenistic and Roman periods

Petra was rapidly built in the first century BC in Hellenistic splendor, and developed a population estimated at 20,000^[2]

The Nabataeans were allies of the first Hasmoneans in their struggles against the Seleucid monarchs. They then became rivals of the Judaean dynasty in the period of its splendor, and a chief element in the disorders which invited Pompey's intervention in Judea. Many Nabataeans were forcefully converted to Judaism by the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus^[3]. It was this King who after putting down a local rebellion invaded and occupied the Nabatean towns of Moab and Gilead and imposed a tribute of an unspecified amount. Obodas knew that Alexander would attack, so was able to ambush Alexander's forces near Gaulane destroying the Israelite army (90BC) ^[4].

The Roman military was not very successful in their campaigns against the Nabataeans, since in 62 BC Marcus Aemilius Scaurus accepted a bribe of 300 talents to relieve a siege to Petra, partly because of the difficult terrain and the fact Scaurus had ran out of food provisions. Hyrcanus who was a friend of Aretas was dispached by Scaurus to the King to buy the peace. In so obtaining peace King Aretas retained his whole possessions, including Damascus and became a Roman vassal^[5].

During the King Malichus II reign, in 32 BC Herod the Great started a war against Nabatea, with the support of Cleopatra. The war started with Herod's army plundering Nabataea and with a large cavalry force, and the occupation of Dium. After this defeat the Neabatean forces amassed near Canatha in Syria, but were attacked and routed. Athenio (Cleopatra's General) sent Canathans to the aid of the Nabateans, and this force crushed Herod's army which then fled to Ormiza. One year later, Herod's army overran Nabataea. ^[6]

After an earthquake in Judea, the Nabateans rebelled and invaded Israel, but Herod at once crossed the Jordan river to Philadelphia and both sides set up camp. The Nabateans under Elthemus refused to give battle, so Herod forced the issue when he attacked their camp. A confused mass of Nabateans gave battle but were defeated. Once the defeated had retreated to their defences, Herod laid siege to the camp and over time some of the defenders surrendered. The remaining Nabatean forces offered 500 talents for peace but this was rejected. Lacking water, the Nabateans were forced out of their camp for battle, but were defeated in this last battle.^[7]

As allies of the Romans the Nabataeans continued to flourish throughout the first century. Their power extended far into Arabia along the Red Sea to Yemen, and Petra remained a cosmopolitan marketplace, though its commerce was diminished by the rise of the Eastern trade-route from Myoshormus to Coptos on the Nile. Under the Pax Romana they lost their warlike and nomadic habits, and were a sober, acquisitive, orderly people, wholly intent on trade and agriculture.

They might have long been a bulwark between Rome and the wild hordes of the desert but for Trajan, who reduced Petra and broke up the Nabataean nationality as the short-lived Roman province of Arabia Petraea.

By the third century the Nabateans had stopped writing in Aramaic and begun writing in Greek instead, and by the fourth century they had converted to Christianity^[8]. The new Arab invaders who soon pressed forward into their seats found the remnants of the Nabataeans transformed into-- peasants.

The city of Petra remained hidden to Westerners until its "discovery" by the Swiss Burckhardt in 1812.

List of Nabatean kings

See Rulers of Nabatea.

Notes

^ - Nabataea.net, Dan Gibson's comprehensive Nabataean site
^ Petra: Lost City of Stone
^ - Johnson, Paul, A History of the Jews, George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Limited, London, 1987
^ JosephusThe Jewish war 1:87 pg 40 Translated by G.A.Williamson 1959, printed 1981
^ Josephus 1:61 Pg48
^ Josephus 1:363-377 pg 75-77
^ Josephus 1:377-391 pg 78-79
^ - Avraham Negev, The Nabateans

References

Negev, Avraham, Nabataean Archaeology Today (New York: New York University press) 1986.
Petra: Lost City of Stone Exhibition catalogue, 2006-07. (Exhibition website)

External links

Bulletin of Nabataean Studies: links on Petra and the Nabataeans
The Nabateans in the Negev
NABATÆANS
The only collection of ancient Nabataean art outside of Jordan