548
PAUL F. HOYE
hand-cut ascent. All around the city were rose-red sandstone formations
and the Nabateans expended a great deal of time and effort carving tombs
into the cliffs. These tombs had facades representing elaborate temples—
Greek-inspired, probably—with small, plain, unadorned chambers cut in
behind the "doors" to serve as crypts.
With the well-guarded Petra as a base of power the Nabateans were
able to control the important roads to the coast south of the Dead Sea
and all the desert country lying to the east of the towns in what is today
Jordan and western Syria. In other words, they controlled all the lands
east of the settled country ruled by the Jews and Romans and other sedentary peoples. (Including, probably, Damascus, so that it is likely that at
the time St. Paul was making his escape by being let down the city wall
in a basket, the governor of the city was a Nabatean.) They also maintained access to the Mediterranean through an area due west of Petra that
is today known as the Gaza Strip, and extended their control south into
what is today Mada'in Salih in Saudi Arabia.
To the Nabateans, control of this territory was probably no less than
a matter of survival. Through it ran the ancient caravan routes over which
came the main source of the Nabateans' wealth and importance: incense.*
In that era the Roman Empire and the Greek states used incredible quantities of incense for their civil and religious ceremonies, and nearly all the
incense seems to have come from South Arabia—from what is today
Southern Yemen and Hadhramaut. Incense comes from the sap of a certain
tree found then and to this day in the highlands of those regions.
Because their prosperity depended almost exclusively on incense, however, the Nabateans were bound to suffer if their Roman customers could
find a cheaper way of getting it. And the Romans did find a cheaper way.
They shipped it on their galleys up the Red Sea to ports closer to Egypt
and the Mediterranean. Since the caravans plodding overland could not
compete with the swift galleys, it was virtually the end of Nabatean wealth
and influence. Toward the end of the first century A.D. they began to decline and a century later had disappeared altogether as a separate state and
people, and their magnificent capital in Petra was left, deserted and empty,
to the wind and sun and an occasional Bedouin, for 1600 years.
Up to this point most of the information is reasonably well documented.
But there are other aspects of Nabatean history and culture which are still
open to speculation and dispute. One of the most important questions has
to do with Mada'in Salih.
There is no doubt that Mada'in Salih was a Nabatean settlement—
* Frankincense: the gum resin of Boswellia sp., here probably B. carterii of
Somali and the opposite coast of Saudi Arabia. Myrrh: the gum resin of Balsamea
( = Balsamodendron) myrrha of the same region (Ed.).
PAUL F. HOYE
hand-cut ascent. All around the city were rose-red sandstone formations
and the Nabateans expended a great deal of time and effort carving tombs
into the cliffs. These tombs had facades representing elaborate temples—
Greek-inspired, probably—with small, plain, unadorned chambers cut in
behind the "doors" to serve as crypts.
With the well-guarded Petra as a base of power the Nabateans were
able to control the important roads to the coast south of the Dead Sea
and all the desert country lying to the east of the towns in what is today
Jordan and western Syria. In other words, they controlled all the lands
east of the settled country ruled by the Jews and Romans and other sedentary peoples. (Including, probably, Damascus, so that it is likely that at
the time St. Paul was making his escape by being let down the city wall
in a basket, the governor of the city was a Nabatean.) They also maintained access to the Mediterranean through an area due west of Petra that
is today known as the Gaza Strip, and extended their control south into
what is today Mada'in Salih in Saudi Arabia.
To the Nabateans, control of this territory was probably no less than
a matter of survival. Through it ran the ancient caravan routes over which
came the main source of the Nabateans' wealth and importance: incense.*
In that era the Roman Empire and the Greek states used incredible quantities of incense for their civil and religious ceremonies, and nearly all the
incense seems to have come from South Arabia—from what is today
Southern Yemen and Hadhramaut. Incense comes from the sap of a certain
tree found then and to this day in the highlands of those regions.
Because their prosperity depended almost exclusively on incense, however, the Nabateans were bound to suffer if their Roman customers could
find a cheaper way of getting it. And the Romans did find a cheaper way.
They shipped it on their galleys up the Red Sea to ports closer to Egypt
and the Mediterranean. Since the caravans plodding overland could not
compete with the swift galleys, it was virtually the end of Nabatean wealth
and influence. Toward the end of the first century A.D. they began to decline and a century later had disappeared altogether as a separate state and
people, and their magnificent capital in Petra was left, deserted and empty,
to the wind and sun and an occasional Bedouin, for 1600 years.
Up to this point most of the information is reasonably well documented.
But there are other aspects of Nabatean history and culture which are still
open to speculation and dispute. One of the most important questions has
to do with Mada'in Salih.
There is no doubt that Mada'in Salih was a Nabatean settlement—
* Frankincense: the gum resin of Boswellia sp., here probably B. carterii of
Somali and the opposite coast of Saudi Arabia. Myrrh: the gum resin of Balsamea
( = Balsamodendron) myrrha of the same region (Ed.).