Nabataean Raqmu carved a rock city for twenty thousand souls
Petra—Arabic Al-Batra, “Rock,” once Raqmu to Nabataeans—lies in southern Jordan. Habitation nearby reaches 7000 BCE; Nabataeans settled in the fourth century BCE and made it their capital in the second. First-century CE peaks saw Al-Khazneh rise and population near 20,000 before Rome annexed Nabataea as Arabia Petraea in 106 CE.
Farming came early to the district: by 7000 BC some of the first recorded farmers lived at Beidha, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic village just north of Petra. Egyptian campaign records and the Amarna letters name the place Pel, Sela or Seir.
In the Iron Age, from 1200 to 600 BC, the Edomites held the area. Its mountains held water in reserve, making it a halt for merchants trading wine, olive oil and timber. Their settlement on the summit of Umm el-Biyara dates no earlier than the seventh century BC, and a tale that 10,000 men were hurled from that mountain is doubted by scholars.
The Nabataeans were nomadic Bedouin herders who roamed the Arabian Desert in search of pasture and water. Though long steeped in Aramaic culture, they are now generally regarded on archaeological, religious and linguistic grounds as a northern Arabian tribe. The city they built reached its height in the first century AD, when the Khazneh was carved and perhaps 20,000 people lived in the city. Rome annexed their kingdom in 106 AD.
Inscriptions give the Nabataean name as Raqēmō. The Bible names a Midianite king Rekem, Josephus wrote that Arabs still called the leading city of Arabia Rekeme after its founder, and Eusebius equated Rekem with Petra; since Arabic raqama means to decorate, the name may refer to the carved façades. In 1964 workers at the gorge entrance found a funerary inscription to one Petraios, born in Raqmu and buried at Jerash. Today it is Jordan’s top attraction, drawing nearly a million visitors a year.
Source: Petra
