Nabataean Kingdom

The Nabataean kingdom controlled the incense trade of northern Arabia from roughly the fourth century BC until Rome annexed it in AD 106. Its capital was Petra, reached through a gorge and carved into rose-coloured sandstone. The Nabataeans began as nomads and never entirely stopped thinking like them. Their wealth came from frankincense and myrrh moving north from Yemen, and from the tolls and water they controlled along the route. Their real accomplishment was hydraulic. They built dams, cisterns and ceramic pipes that let a city of perhaps twenty thousand live in a desert, and they hid water sources from outsiders as a defence. Diodorus records an early Greek attempt to conquer them that failed for exactly that reason. They wrote in an Aramaic script whose cursive descendant became Arabic, which is their most durable legacy. Aretas IV, who ruled around the turn of the era, built most of what visitors now see. The kingdom stayed independent by being useful and by paying, first to the Seleucids and then to Rome. Its end was quiet: Trajan annexed it in 106 without a recorded war and made it the province of Arabia Petraea. Trade then shifted to sea routes and to Palmyra, and Petra declined. An earthquake in 363 damaged much of it. It was known to local Bedouin throughout and was reported to Europe in 1812 by a Swiss traveller in disguise. Their kings took Greek titles and married into neighbouring dynasties. Paul mentions escaping the governor under Aretas at Damascus. The Treasury at Petra is a tomb rather than a treasury, and the name comes from a Bedouin story about a pharaoh's gold. Petra was named a World Heritage site in 1985.

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