The Nabataeans

As promised, this is the “all things Nabataean” update. Now if you had asked me prior to my arrival in Egypt who the Nabataeans were, I would have been hard pressed to tell you a single thing. I might have come up with the fact they were some ancient people, but that would be about it. They were in fact an ancient Semitic people who primarily inhabited the area in Syria, Jordan, and Israel. If you’ve heard of the Spice Route, these are the people. They had a series of trade routes which were centered around oases. It sounds like they started out by just attacking and stealing from caravans and eventually moved into the more lucrative “protective services” business. There weren’t any definitive borders and not too much is actually known about them. Like everyone else in the region, they were eventually conquered by Trajan, absorbed into the Roman Empire, and anything unique about them was pretty much lost into the mix. I’m not completely sure of the dates for all this activity, but I’m thinking it was like a few hundred years BCE to a couple hundred years AD.

So, my first brush with the Nabataea’s (or what remains of them) was on a trip back from Tel Aviv one Saturday afternoon. My colleague Erin asked if we could stop by some ruins about 10km from the border of Egypt. Far be it from me to pass up a photo op with ancient rubble, so in the midst of the first sand storm of the season we pulled into the ancient city of Shivta in the Negev Desert. It’s generally accepted that this was originally a Nabataean city which later became a Byzantine settlement (probably for pilgrims on their way to St. Catherine's Monastary in the Sinai.) What’s left is primarily Byzantine era and consists of piles of rocks, the remnants of three churches, elaborate irrigation systems, cisterns, grape presses, and lots and lots of sand. It’s part of the Israeli National Park system and on this particularly sandy day, we were the only ones there. My expectations were pretty low, but I was pleasantly surprised by how interesting and big it was. I’ve included a few pics on this page so you can get a basic idea of what it looks like now. It continually amazes me that people could eke out an existence in such an inhospitable environment, but from what I’ve read, it wasn’t quite as dry here a couple thousand years back.

My next exposure to Nabataean culture was more calculated with a long weekend in Jordan at what is considered their ancient capital of Petra. Ever since I saw it in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Petra has been on my “must see” list, so I am pretty psyched to finally make it there. Even though it’s actually not that far away, getting there, like doing most things in this part of the world is complicated and takes forever. Instead of just heading due east, a group of six of us drove down to Taba on the Red Sea, left our cars at a MFO outpost, took a taxi to the border, walked into Israel, spent the night in Eilat, took another taxi to the border, walked into Aqaba, Jordan, and then had the hotel car drive us two+ hours back north. It is a beautiful and desolate drive up from Aqaba and according to the driver, was where they filmed lots of scenes for Lawrence of Arabia (don’t know if this is true or not, but seems plausible).

The city of Petra itself is pretty nondescript and perched on the side of a mountain down into the valley. It’s full of narrow crowded streets that either cling to the edge or are frighteningly steep. We stayed at the Petra Moon hotel, a very “basic” place directly across the street from the uber-glamorous Movenpick hotel that looks like it’s straight out of the pages of Architectural Digest. Believe me, if I ever go back, screw economy, that’s where I’ll be staying. Nevertheless, it was a fantastic location and we basically dumped our things and headed out to the old city. It’s spread out over a fairly large area so you could spend days and days seeing everything. Since we only had two days to take in as much as possible, we had a tentative route planned. After wolfing down a surprisingly tasty Jordanian lunch, we decided to work our way into the main valley through a fairly high walled gorge that at times was so narrow and steep you had to squeeze yourself through. The whole area is full of sandstone and it ranges in color from pinkish to marbleized reds, tans, blacks, etc. It’s so beautiful in areas that it almost looks like it has been painted (especially at sunset). Anyway, after a couple hour trek through the gorge we started running across the first carvings into the stone. The whole “city” is a series of hundreds of tombs and public buildings that were carved into the sheer cliffs of the valley. The actual houses and day-to-day buildings are long gone as they were mostly in tent-like structures. The tombs range from the very simple big square holes carved near ground level to elaborate Romanesque and neoclassical ones carved 50+ feet off the ground complete with columns, pediments, balustrades, etc. They are long since looted and nothing remains inside except centuries of soot from fires from the Bedouins built in them. Some of them are massive inside with several rooms, ceilings 20+ feet tall, niches for who knows what, and alter-like structures. It was amazing to me that they were able to carve these with such precision that the walls and ceiling are all smooth and meet at 90 degree angles.

Anyway, after about four hours of scrambling over rocks and up and down fairly large hills, we called it a day and went back, showered all the sand off, and met at a bar which was actually inside an old tomb. They refer to it as the oldest bar in the world since the tomb itself is upwards of 2000 years old. It was so atmospheric; all candle lit, low tables, great music, shisha pipes burning. A great way to end the day.

The next morning, we followed the main drag into the city called the Siq. In Petra’s heyday, this was the ceremonial route. Since we are talking pre-Islam and the Nabataeans were polytheistic, the priests used this path during religious ceremonies. It’s in a natural gorge also, but they carved parts of it away to increase its size and grandeur. The Siq dramatically ends at the Treasury building (think Indiana Jones or the Transformers). After a couple more hours running up and down hills, we decided to take it easy and rent donkeys to take us up to the monastery. Of course you can do tea stops many places along the way and there are Bedouins with little shops set up everywhere to sell you junk, but they are not nearly as aggressive as in Egypt. Actually overall I found the Jordanians to be quite pleasant.

Since people have been living in the valley for thousands of years, there is a lot of stuff that has been lost/thrown away over the years. It seems that the locals have an industry built up on digging in the sand and trying to find anything of value. Most of them will readily admit that most of the crap they sell is made in India or China, but they do have small stashes of Roman coins, jewelry, ceramics, and other things for a hefty price. When we were in a relatively desolate area, an old man on a donkey stopped us to show us his wares and after some time and negotiation, Jim bought a coin and I got a small bronze bird. Jim has quite a collection of ancient coins and is certain this one was actually authentic. He also believed the man about my bird. It is very small and worn with no visible signs of modern casting like the other mass produced stuff had. The other things that make us believe it may be real, is that we did not see one other item like it anywhere else in two days of stopping at stalls and stores. Furthermore, in a small museum, they had displays with similar type objects. Regardless, I think it’s cool, and if it is a couple thousand years old, all the better.

Even with taking the donkeys, we were still pretty beat and opted for a camel ride out of the city that afternoon. I’ve been on camels before, and they are seriously cranky animals. This time however, the guide actually told us how to sit on them properly, and it ended up being fairly comfortable. That evening we all went to a Turkish bath for a steam, massage, and scrub. And other than nailing my head on a low door and bleeding profusely for an hour, it was a perfect way to end our journey.
One last thing, what brought about the decline of Petra? Well Roman rule combined with sea-based trade routes pretty much did the city in, but a serious earthquake in the 4th century was the final nail on the coffin. The city pretty much disappeared from memory and was just inhabited by local Bedouin until the 19th century when Europeans re-discovered it. It’s now a UNESCO world heritage site and was voted one of the new Seven Wonders of the World in 1997.