The Nabataeans

The Nabataeans emerged from nomadic Arab trading tribes of the northern Arabian desert, first recorded in 312 BCE resisting an attack by one of Alexander’s successors at Petra or nearby Sela. Within a few centuries they had built a kingdom whose wealth came entirely from controlling trade: frankincense and myrrh moving north from southern Arabia, spices arriving by sea at their Red Sea port of Leuke Kome, silk and goods passing between Arabia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean. They carved their capital, Petra, directly into the rose-colored sandstone of a narrow desert canyon, engineering a water system sophisticated enough to sustain a major city in an arid gorge. Under Aretas IV (9 BCE-40 CE) the kingdom reached from Hegra in the Hijaz to the Hauran near Damascus, and Petra received its grandest monuments, including the Treasury facade.

The kingdom’s independence ended quietly. When the last king, Rabbel II Soter, died in 106 CE, Rome moved troops in from Syria, Judaea, and Egypt and annexed the territory as the province of Arabia Petraea, with a new capital at Bostra — no battle is recorded. Nabataean identity did not vanish at that moment: the language persisted in spoken use among some populations into the 4th century CE, and Nabataean script gradually morphed into the earliest form of Arabic script over the following centuries. But the political entity was gone, and the economic base went next. By the 4th century, growing Red Sea shipping routes and rival caravan hubs like Palmyra had already been pulling trade away from the overland incense road. A massive earthquake in 363 CE destroyed roughly half of Petra and wrecked its water system, ending what commercial life remained. Dominance built on controlling one road lasts only as long as the road matters.