Hidden desert cisterns let the Nabataeans outlast armies sent to conquer them
The Nabataeans turned an empty desert into a fortress. They dug covered cisterns marked with signs only they could read, so when an enemy came, they simply withdrew into the waterless wastes and waited for thirst to win. Greek writers marvelled that Assyrians, Persians and Macedonians had all failed to subdue them.
They began as nomadic Arab herders following known routes between pasture and water. Where they came from is disputed. Yemen seems unlikely because their gods, language and script share nothing with southern Arabia; the Hejaz is favoured because of shared deities and the appearance of their name's root in early Hejazi languages; and Assyrian records of rebellious Nabatu hint at a Mesopotamian origin with a westward migration between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. Popular links to the biblical Nebaioth are considered a misconception.
Wealth came from incense. Caravans carried frankincense, myrrh and spices from southern Arabia through Petra to the port of Gaza for European buyers. When the Qedarites, who had dominated the trade, backed a failed revolt against Persia and lost ground after a province was carved out before 363 BC, the Nabataeans probably stepped into their role. They left no long histories of their own, only thousands of inscriptions, graffiti and coins.
Most of what is known of their early military prowess comes from Diodorus Siculus, writing around 30 BC from an eyewitness account by Hieronymus of Cardia. After Alexander died in 323 BC, his general Antigonus tried to seize their land. In 312 BC an officer named Athenaeus looted a rock refuge while the men were away trading, only to be caught and destroyed by a rapid pursuit. A second expedition under Demetrius the Besieger was turned back and settled for peace. When Antigonus then tried to harvest Dead Sea bitumen, archers on reed rafts, almost certainly Nabataean, drove his men off, an episode described as the first conflict over a Middle Eastern petroleum product.
Statehood came in two stages: a council of elders in the 4th century BC, then kingship by the mid-3rd century BC, driven by the demands of trade and war. The Zenon papyri place them in the Hauran at that time, and the kingdom later stretched from the Hejaz to Damascus, which it held from 85 to 71 BC. Rome annexed it in AD 106 as Arabia Petraea.
Source: Nabataean Kingdom
