Nabataean Kingdom

Built on the profits of the incense caravans, the Nabataean Kingdom was an Arab state whose rock-cut capital, Petra, lay in the deserts of what is now southern Jordan. From around the middle of the third century BCE until Rome absorbed it in 106 CE, its kings held the routes linking southern Arabia with the Mediterranean, and at their height they ruled from the Hejaz to the Hauran.

The Nabataeans began as one of several nomadic Arab tribes herding across the Arabian desert, and where they came from is uncertain. Scholars have proposed Yemen, the eastern coast of Arabia, the Hejaz and even Mesopotamia; the Hejaz is often thought the most persuasive, since the Nabataeans shared many gods with its peoples. They enter the written record in the fourth century BCE, apparently taking over the frankincense trade after the Qedarite Arabs lost ground to Persia. Their survival depended on hidden, covered cisterns that only they knew how to find.

The fullest early account, preserved by the Greek historian Diodorus, describes how Antigonus, one of the generals who divided the empire of Alexander the Great, tried to subdue them in 312 BCE. His officer Athenaeus raided their stronghold, called simply "the rock", while the men were away, but a Nabataean force caught his army in camp and, by Diodorus's telling, almost wiped it out. A second expedition under Antigonus's son Demetrius failed to take the rock and settled for gifts and hostages. Later rivalry between the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and the Seleucid Empire left room for the Nabataeans to spread beyond Edom.

Kings emerged from an earlier council of elders, perhaps as early as the third century BCE; papyri and coins point to a monarchy by then, though the first ruler known by name is Aretas I, mentioned around 169 BCE. The kingdom minted its own coins from the second century BCE. Caravans carried frankincense and myrrh from southern Arabia through Hegra and Petra to the port of Gaza, and the towns of the Negev, such as Avdat, Mamshit and Elusa, guarded the road. Officially the state wrote in Aramaic, while its people spoke an early form of Arabic. The Greek geographer Strabo thought the kingdom well governed and its king close to his people.

Friendly at first with the Maccabees of Judaea, the Nabataeans later clashed with the Hasmonean kings. After Alexander Jannaeus seized Gaza in 96 BCE, Obodas I defeated him around 93 BCE and then, at Cana in 84 BCE, beat the Seleucid king Antiochus XII, who died in the battle. Obodas was afterwards worshipped as a god. Under Aretas III, between about 87 and 62 BCE, the kingdom reached its greatest size and held Damascus for some years.

Nabataean quarrels with the Hasmoneans were among the troubles that drew Pompey into Judaea, and in 62 BCE a Roman army under Marcus Aemilius Scaurus besieged Petra, and Aretas III agreed to pay tribute. Nabataea kept its kings but became a client of Rome. When the last king, Rabbel II, died in 106 CE, the emperor Trajan annexed the kingdom, apparently with troops from Syria and Egypt, and made it the province of Arabia Petraea. Trade carried on for a time, but Palmyra later drew the Arabian caravans away from Petra.

Shown on our maps as the Nabatean Kingdom, it appears from 300 BCE to 100 CE, beside the Ptolemaic and Seleucid states and later the Roman Empire. The 300 BCE map draws it as a state slightly ahead of the evidence, since the monarchy is usually dated from about the mid-third century BCE.