Understanding the Nabateans

Home > Magazines > BAR > November/December 1988

028 In 312 B.C. a Greek diplomat and historian named Hieronymus of Cardia visited the Dead Sea and probably the Negev and reported:a “There are many Arabian tribes who use the desert as pasture, [but] the Nabateans far surpass the others in wealth, although they are not much more than 10,000 in number.” Masters of the desert, the Nabateans were the dominant traders, merchants and caravan guides for centuries. The principal factor that accounts for the Nabatean superiority was their unrivaled ability to procure water in the desert. Hieronymus describes this in detail. In modern terms, the Nabateans […]

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Footnotes

We know Hieronymus’s work only from quotations in the history of Diodorus of Sicily. Diodorus, a first-century B.C. author, wrote a history of the world in 40 books.

This site is known in the Bible as Dedan. See Genesis 10:7, 25:3; 1 Chronicles 1:9; Isaiah 21:13; Jeremiah 25:23, 49:8; Ezekiel 25:13, 27:20, 38:13.

“Nympheaum” literally means “a temple of the nymph,” but in Roman architecture it is applied to any building containing a fountain.

These chronologies apply primarily to the history of the Nabateans in the Negev and do not necessarily apply indiscriminately to the whole of the Nabatean realm.

Oboda was excavated in 1958 by my teacher and friend Professor Michael Avi-Yonah, and from the autumn of that year to July 1961 by the author, on behalf of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Mampsis was excavated by the author in the years 1965–1967, on behalf of the Hebrew University.

Most Arabian personal names Safaitic-Thamudic and Nabatean—have basic forms, such as ‘abd (“servant of”). The Safaitic-Thamudic names use this basic form as is; but the Nabateans add the letter “u,” so that it reads ‘abdu, thus distinguishing it from Safaitic-Thamudic. In addition, each personal name has additional forms, consisting of diminutives, feminine forms, etc. Safaitic-Thamudic names are represented in all forms, but the poorer Nabatean-Aramaic vocabulary has chosen at random this or that form. Moreover, numerous groups of personal names are not represented in Nabatean-Aramaic at all. From all this, I conclude that the Safaitic-Thamudic group is closer to the Arabian mother culture, from which the Nabateans, who were affiliated with this mother culture, picked out personal names at random; quite certainly not the other way around.

Herodotus, Diodorus of Sicily, Strabo, the Books of the Maccabees, Josephus Flavius, Stephanus of Byzantium and others. Except for names of their rulers, by which the Nabateans dated their inscriptions, the Nabateans made no allusion to historical events of any kind in their inscriptions.

Avraham Negev with Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, “Obodas the God,” Israel Exploration Journal 36 (1986), p. 56.