ON THE COVER: Hewn from a red sandstone cliff, Khaznet Firaun (Arabic for “Treasury of the Pharaoh”) astounds visitors as they emerge from a narrow defile into mountain-enclosed Petra, in Jordan. Although an Arab legend relates that Pharaoh deposited his gold here, the monument—depicted in this hand-tinted lithograph by David Roberts (1796–1864)—is most likely the tomb of the Nabatean king Aretas IV (9 B.C.–40 A.D.). Although Petra was probably a city of tombs of the Nabatean dead, other sites reported by Avraham Negev in
“Understanding the Nabateans,” were thriving towns in the far flung Nabatean trade network.