Nabatean culture

The Nabataeans were ancient peoples of southern Jordan, Canaan and the northern part of Arabia, whose oasis settlements in the time of Josephus (AD 37 – c. 100), 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.

World Heritage Sites connected to 'Nabatean culture':

  • Al-Hijr largest remaining Nabatean site south of Petra, "complementary, giving a fuller picture of Nabataean civilisation than Petra itself" (AB ev)
  • Bosra "was a major Nabataean city in the 1st century CE, but was profoundly altered by the Roman and then Byzantine presence. The Nabataean vestiges are few in number,.." (AB ev Al Hijr)
  • Incense Route of the Negev remains of Nabatean desert settlements on a trade route
  • Masada Nabatean pottery was found, probably due to Nabatean involvement in the siege over Masada.
  • Petra "indisputably the major archaeological site of Nabataean civilisation, of which it was the capital" (AB ev Al-Hijr)
  • Wadi Rum Wadi Rum became a Nabataean outpost on the route between Al-Higr (Meda’in Saleh) in Saudi Arabia and Petra. (AB ev)