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NABATEANS

(Gk. Nabataíoi)

A people who first emerge as an independent group in the report by Diodorus Siculus of a raid by the Seleucid general Antigonus in 312 b.c.e. However, other classical authors refer to a people situated along the western edge of the Arabian Peninsula, the Nabaṭû, who, after failing as pirates in the Red Sea, make their way northward along the coast. The Nabaṭû apparently represented a confederacy of seminomads seeking a more permanent lifestyle. It is at Petra, the southernmost stronghold of the biblical Edomites, that they finally found their refuge, amalgamated with the sedentary Edomites, and became the Nabateans of history. Edomites resisting symbiosis with the Bedouin group moved westward, to become known as Idumeans, but ties between the two groups long remained, as is illustrated by the ancestry of Herod the Great, whose father was an Idumean and his mother a Nabatean.

The joining of a vigorous wandering people with a sedentary population led to the formation of one of the most important commercial bodies in the Middle East during the last few centuries b.c.e. through the 4th century c.e. Utilizing their earlier knowledge of the trade routes of the Arabian Peninsula, the Nabateans were able to secure the sources and the markets of the lucrative frankincense and myrrh trade, add to it spices, gems, balsams, bitumen, and even the China silk trade in the course of time.

Monarchy had soon followed tribal sheikdom and with it came the urge to emulate neighboring, more sophisticated, cultures. Under the hand of King Aretas IV (9 b.c.e.–40 c.e.), Petra became an urban capital city, complete with an oversized theater, nymphaeum, public bath, temples, and more than 800 rock-carved funerary monuments, some of which reached monumental proportions.

Commerce required expansion, and by the 1st century c.e. the Nabateans controlled more than 1000 sites throughout Coele-Syria and Saudi Arabia, with the contacts reaching from Damascus to the north to Medain Selah to the south, through the Sinai Peninsula, into Egypt, and into the Roman West.

Such a rich and expanding provincial kingdom attracted the attention of Rome as early as the conquest of Syro-Palestine by Pompey in 64 b.c.e. Early attempts to subdue the Nabateans failed for one reason or another, and they were permitted to exist in a quasi-autonomous state. Emperor Augustus had raised an investiture objection to the accession of Aretas IV, but had done nothing formally to claim the kingdom. Trajan, however, found it necessary to consolidate Roman holdings in the Middle East, and when his legions marched into Petra in 106 c.e. the Nabatean kingdom, as a political entity, ceased to exist. However, contrary to views held earlier in Nabatean studies, current evidence suggests that the takeover actually disrupted neither the economy nor the lifestyle of the people.

Along with commercial brilliance, the widespread connections of the traders opened the way for an equally impressive borrowing of all of the lifestyle advantages of the greater world around them. This habit of extensive borrowing clouds the issue of the degree to which any given attributes of Nabatean culture are really Nabatean in origin, or whether individual aspects represent adoption, adaptation, or actual innovation. Regardless of the confusion, however, the native abilities of the people resulted in the creation of a most unique mosaic of technology, art, architecture, religion, and all other facets of daily life.

Perhaps the most striking feature of Nabatean technology appears in their hydrological achievements, both for water collection and distribution in the capital city and for agricultural use in the arid and semi-arid portions of the kingdom. Ceramic pipelines, reservoirs, gravity feeds, runnels, and capacious cisterns all served the urban environments. Outside, dams closed off wadis to collect water during the rainy season, circles of stone retarded runoff from slopes, and irrigation lines fed crops. It is possibly in regard to the conservation of water supplies that the seminomadic background of the Nabateans may be seen to emerge most obviously.

The same degree of technological sophistication may be seen in other aspects of Nabatean life: architecture, ceramics, metallurgy, chemistry, mathematics, construction, and even toxicology. Greco-Roman architectural forms were borrowed, adapted, and put to use, especially for the facades of funerary monuments; common ware pottery of the period was simply copied, whereas fine thin (“eggshell”) wares, plain and painted, emerged as perhaps the best ceramics produced in the Middle East up to that time; mining, processing, and manufacturing of iron, copper, bronze, lead, gold, and silver objects was on a par with the rest of the Roman world; and so it was with virtually every facet of life.

Cultural sophistication and eclecticism followed technological, to be seen in art and architectural forms, religion, dress, diplomatic relations, and even in communication. The Aramaic-speaking Nabateans even created another script to add to those in use in the Middle East of their day. A running cursive writing form developed, used both for lapidary and more common graffiti. It was this script that would somewhat later be transformed into the “Arabic” writing still in use today.

Prior to the excavations of George Horsfield at Petra beginning in 1929, the only indicator of Nabatean presence on a site was epigraphic evidence. Horsfield linked the fine thin pottery of Petra to the Nabateans, permitting identification of sites throughout all of the ancient kingdom and along its trade routes, regardless of whether graffiti or other inscribed materials were present. Survey activity began to pinpoint Nabatean sites and to reveal the extent of their influence. Excavations followed slowly, beginning at Petra and, more recently, at other major sites on both sides of the Jordan River.

As a result of a disastrous earthquake which occurred on 19 May 363 c.e., Petra was virtually destroyed and its people sought other home sites. With the loss of the dominance of the capital city, the Nabateans as a nation were themselves virtually lost as well, except for the sparse classical references, those in the intertestamental biblical sources, and the myriad of graffiti spread throughout the regions of their ancient realm. More extensive excavations, especially at Petra, and research in the classical and biblical records, have continued, gradually piecing together more and more of Nabatean life. Lack of official records, annals, and similar materials is still a major problem, and many elements of Nabatean customs, history, and other details are still missing. Likewise missing are details of presence of the people, as they both lingered on earlier sites and sought new areas to exercise their expertise in commerce and their myriad of skills borrowed and developed during the life of the kingdom.

Philip C. Hammond

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

NABATEANS

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)