A people who were never really forgotten
Petra is often described as forgotten, but the people who built it were well known to ancient writers. Greek and Roman authors described the Nabataeans, Judean sources mention their kings, and their own inscriptions survive across modern Jordan, Israel, Syria and Saudi Arabia. What faded from general memory was the details of their world, partly because few Nabataean texts survive beyond short inscriptions and no long narrative histories written by Nabataeans themselves are known.
Arab origins
The Nabataeans are generally understood to have been an Arab people. Most of their personal names are Arabic, and scholars usually conclude that they spoke an Arabic dialect while writing in Aramaic, the common written language of the region. Where they came from before settling in the area of Edom and the Negev is debated. They are first clearly mentioned in Greek sources in connection with events around 312 BCE.
The historian Diodorus Siculus, drawing on earlier writers, described them as nomads who lived in tents and, according to his account, avoided building houses, sowing grain or planting trees. It is a useful snapshot of an early stage, but the Nabataeans did not stay that way. Over the following centuries they settled, built towns and became farmers and city dwellers, while maintaining links with caravan routes and with desert pastoralists.
Trade and wealth
The Nabataeans grew rich by managing caravans that carried frankincense and myrrh from southern Arabia, along with spices and other goods, to the Mediterranean. The incense trade ran through lands of the Sabaean kingdom and other South Arabian states before reaching Nabataean territory, where caravans stopped for water, protection and markets. Knowledge of desert routes and water sources was their great advantage. Their trade networks also reached toward wider routes such as the Silk Road trade routes, although the details are debated.
Kings and queens
Nabataea was a monarchy. Named kings appear from the 2nd century BCE, including Aretas I, Obodas I, Aretas III, Malichus II, Aretas IV and Rabbel II. Aretas III is known for extending Nabataean influence north as far as Damascus in the early 1st century BCE. In 62 BCE Roman forces under Pompey’s officers intervened in the region, and the Nabataean kingdom became a Roman client state; Roman expansion shaped its fortunes from then on.
Aretas IV, who ruled for most of the period from about 9 BCE to 40 CE, is often seen as the high point of Nabataean prosperity. His inscriptions style him with a phrase usually translated as “lover of his people”. Queens such as Shaqilat appear alongside kings in inscriptions and on coins. The last king, Rabbel II, died in 106 CE, the same year Rome annexed his kingdom.
Greek writers such as Strabo, relying on an eyewitness source, described Nabataean society as relatively egalitarian and frugal, with a king who was expected to be accountable to his people. This is an outsider’s impression and may be idealised, but it is consistent with the modest, communal character of some Nabataean dining and burial customs.
Gods and sacred stones
Nabataean religion was polytheistic. The leading male god was Dushara, whose name is usually explained as “He of the Shara”, the mountain range near Petra. Female deities included Al-Uzza, Allat and Manat, who were also worshipped in wider Arabia. Others included Qos, a god known from Edom, and Baalshamin (“Lord of the Heavens”), worshipped in Syria. Some kings were deified after death, and Obodas I is the best-known case.
A striking feature is the use of aniconic images: carved or natural standing stones, called betyls, that represented gods without human form. Many are found in niches along the approach to Petra. Over time, outside influences produced more figurative images. Dushara, for example, was sometimes equated by outsiders with Dionysus, and other deities were shown in Greek style. Religious practice took place in temples, at open-air high places and in the dining rooms (triclinia) where communal ritual meals were held.
Writing
Nabataean inscriptions are written in a form of Aramaic with its own cursive style. The script is a consonantal alphabet of the type that descended from Phoenician writing, and it is widely regarded as an ancestor of the Arabic script. Inscriptions range from short graffiti on rocks to formal tomb texts. The Namara inscription, dated to 328 CE, is often cited as showing a stage between Nabataean writing and early Arabic. Evidence from South Arabian inscriptions shows that other scripts were used elsewhere in the peninsula, so the Nabataean script is one thread rather than the whole story.
Tomb inscriptions at Hegra in Saudi Arabia record who owned a tomb and who could be buried in it, and they often threaten fines for anyone breaking the rules. These texts are some of the best evidence for law, family and property in Nabataean society, and women appear among the owners.
Daily life and customs
What we know of everyday life comes mostly from archaeology and brief ancient comments. Nabataean potters made distinctive thin, painted fine ware, regarded as some of the finest pottery of its day. Houses at Petra had painted plaster and, in some cases, Hellenistic decoration. Banquets were an important social institution, and the arrangement of triclinia recalls the Greek symposium, though the practice has Near Eastern roots as well.
Burial, banqueting and the cult of the dead were closely connected, which is one reason Petra has so many tombs and dining halls. The Nabataeans also minted coins from the 1st century BCE, with the heads of kings, and they traded across wide distances. Their ability to blend Arabian, Aramaic and Hellenistic habits made them well suited to the crossroads they occupied, and that mixture is what the monuments at Petra show most clearly.