The Nabataeans, also Nabateans (/ˌnæbəˈtiːənz/; Arabic: الأنباط al-ʾAnbāṭ, compare to Ancient Greek: Ναβαταίος, Latin: Nabatæus), were an Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the Southern Levant, and whose settlements, most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu, now called Petra, in CE 37 – c. 100, gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Arabia and Syria, 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 conquered the Nabataean kingdom, annexing it to the Roman Empire, where their individual culture, easily identified by their characteristic finely potted painted ceramics, was adopted into the larger Greco-Roman culture. They were later converted to Christianity. Jane Taylor, a writer, describes them as “one of the most gifted peoples of the ancient world”.
The Nabataeans were one among several nomadic tribes that roamed the Arabian Desert, moving with their herds to wherever they could find pasture and water. These nomads became familiar with their area as seasons passed, and they struggled to survive during bad years when seasonal rainfall diminished. Despite the fact that the Nabataeans were initially embedded in Aramaic culture, theories about them having Aramean roots are rejected by modern scholars. Instead; historical, religious and linguistic evidence confirm that they are a northern Arabian tribe.
The precise origin of this specific tribe of Arab nomads remains uncertain. One hypothesis locates their original homeland in today’s Yemen, in the south-west of the Arabian peninsula; however, their deities, language and script share nothing with those of southern Arabia. Another hypothesis argues that they came from the eastern coast of the Peninsula. The suggestion that they came from Hejaz area is considered to be more convincing, as they share many deities with the ancient people there, and “nbtw,” the root consonant of the tribe’s name, is found in the early Semitic languages of Hejaz.
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Author: Wikipedia
Keywords: Nabataean, Nabatea, Nabataea, Edomite, Edom, Negev, Herod the Great, Jordan, Ancient Jordan, Moab, Moabite, Ammon, Ammonite
Bible reference(s): 1Macc 5:25, 1Macc 9:35
Source: This article uses material from the Wikipedia article “Nabataeans,” which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
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