Category:Nabateans (subject)
The Nabateans were a Semitic population living in Southern Jordan and the northern part of Arabia.
See Nabatean Kings
Overview
In the Greek and Roman Period the Nabateans created a powerful kingdom at the borders of the land of Israel. Their cities (Petra and Bosra) controlled the commercial routes from the Arabian peninsula to the Mediterranean.
The Nabateans supported the Maccabeans in their fight against the Seleucids but then resisted to the expansion of the Hasmoneans kings and Herod the Great.
In 106 CE the Nabaten kingdom was absorbed into the Roman Empire. As part of the new province of Arabia Petrae, the Nabatean towns continued to flourished in the centuries to come.
The Nabateans in ancient sources
Diodorus Siculus (1st cent. BCE)
The land (of Arabia) is situated between Syria and Egypt, and is divided among many peoples of diverse characteristics. Now the eastern parts are inhabited by Arabs, who bear the name of Nabateans and range over a country which is partly desert and partly waterless, though a small section of it is fruitful” (Bibliotheca II,48,1-2).
“Consequently the Arabs who inhabit this country, being difficult to overcome in war, remain always unenslaved; furthermore, they never at any time accept a man of another country as their overlord and continue to maintain their liberty unimpaired” (II,48,4).
“They are exceptionally fond of freedom...” (XIX,94,1).
“Some of them raise camels, others sheep, pasturing them in the desert. While there are many Arabian tribes who use the desert as pasture, the Nabateans far surpass the others in wealth although they are not much more than ten thousand in number; for not a few of them are accustomed to bringing down to the sea frankincense and myrrh and the most valuable kind of spices, which they procure from those who convey them from what is called Arabia Eudaemon”, i.e. Arabia, the Blessed (XIX, 94, 4-5).
The Nabateans in Scholarship
The Nabateans in Fiction
External links
Major articles
- History of the Nabatean Kings / Schurer/Vermes / 1 (1973) 574-586
Pages in category "Nabateans (subject)"
The following 9 pages are in this category, out of 9 total.
1
- The Other Side of the Jordan (1940 Glueck), book
- Deities and Dolphins: The Story of the Nabataeans (1965 Glueck), book
- The Nabatean Potter's Workshop at Oboda (1974 Negev), book
- Roman Arabia (1983 Bowersock), book
- Adone ha-midbar: toldot ha-Nabatim u-mamlakhtam (1983 Negev), book
- The Late Hellenistic and Early Roman Pottery of Nabatean Oboda (1986 Negev), book
- Personal Names in the Nabatean Realm (1991 Negev), book
- The Architecture of Oboda (1997 Negev), book