Petra

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Summary: The Royal Nabataeans
Review: The Hebrew Bible called them Edomites. Their land of Edom ended up part of the Babylonian Empire, around 2,550 years ago. Whatever was left of their culture was hard hit by Persian emperors switching trade routes to across Southern Arabia and the Gulf of Aqaba, to Gaza.

Some 150-250 years later Nabataeans showed up there, east of the Jordan River and into the Sinai Peninsula, the Negev and northeastern Arabia. They were related to the Kedarites and Nebaioths, both descendants of Abraham, by his son Ishmael.

About 300-400 years later the daughter of Nabataean King Aretas IV married Herod Antipas of Galilee. Then Herod dropped her for Herodias, archenemy of John the Baptist. So King Aretas IV launched a successful invasion, during which he briefly won Damascus. In fact St Paul had to escape by hiding in a basket lowered from a window of a building in that city!

The Nabataeans were equally successful as middlemen in the aromatics and spice trade between Arabia, the East and the Red Sea. Their royal house and court quickly took up Western cultural practices spreading from Alexandria, Greece and Rome by way of the Silk Road. But just about every other level of Nabataean society held fast to doing things the Eastern way.

And that's why Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo and Eugenia Equini Schneider have chided other researchers for just studying the Western-influenced rock-carved tombs of the royals. Within the capital and outside, fountains, homes, market complexes, palaces, and places of worship have been overlooked. Thus researchers have looked at Christianity as it took hold in PETRA. But in fact Christian communities were larger and more important elsewhere in the territory.

You don't have to be a scientist to like this clearly written, nicely illustrated and well organized book. Other recent books of the same quality are Christian Auge and Jean-Marie Dentzer's PETRA; Udi Levy's THE LOST CIVILIZATION OF PETRA; and Jane Taylor's PETRA AND THE LOST KINGDOM OF THE NABATAEANS.