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( Nabatean)
The Nabataeans (Arabic ???????, Al-Anba?) were an ancient Arab, Semitic, trading people of southern Jordan, Canaan and the northern part of Arabia- whose oasis settlements in the time of Josephus gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Syria and Arabia, 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 definitively conquered the Nabataeans and incorporated them into the Roman Empire, where their individual culture, easily identified by their characteristic finely-potted painted ceramics, became dispersed and was eventually lost. Many examples of graffiti and inscriptions — largely of names and greetings — document the area of Nabataean culture, which extended as far north as the north end of the Dead Sea, and testify to widespread literacy; but no Nabataean literature has survived, nor was any noted in antiquity,[citation needed] and the temples bear no inscriptions. Onomastic analysis has suggested[citation needed] that a Nabataean culture may have embraced multiple ethnicities. Classical references to the Nabataeans begin with Diodorus Siculus; they suggest that the Nabataeans' trade routes and the origins of their goods were regarded as trade secrets, and disguised in tales that should have strained outsiders' credulity. Diodorus described them as a strong tribe of some 10,000 warriors, pre-eminent among the nomads of Arabia, eschewing agriculture, fixed houses, and the use of wine, but adding to pastoral pursuits a profitable trade with the seaports in frankincense and myrrh and spices from Arabia Felix (today's Yemen), as well as a trade with Egypt in bitumen from the Dead Sea. Their arid country was their best safeguard, for the bottle-shaped cisterns for rain-water which they excavated in the rocky or clay-rich soil were carefully concealed from invaders. The extent of Nabataean trade resulted in cross-cultural influences that reached as far as the Red Sea coast of southern Arabia. The gods worshipped at Petra were headed by Dushara and al-Uzza. The Nabataean origins remain obscure. On the similarity of sounds, Jerome suggested a connection with the tribe Nebaioth mentioned in Genesis, but modern historians are cautious about an early Nabatean history.
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