Tenacious as they were of the nomad usages of their ancestors, the Nabataeans had already some tincture of foreign culture when they first appear in history. That culture was naturally Aramaic; they wrote a letter to Antigonus “in Syriac letters,” and Syriac continued to be the language of their coins and inscriptions when the tribe grew into a kingdom, and profited by the decay of the Seleucids to extend its borders northward over the more fertile country east of the Jordan. They occupied the Haurân, and about 85 b.c. their king Aretas (Hâritha) became lord of Damascus and Coele Syria. Allies of the first Hasmonaeans in their struggles against the Greeks, they became the rivals of the Judaean dynasty in the period of its splendour, and a chief element in the disorders which invited Pompey’s intervention in Palestine. The Roman arms were not Very successful against the sons of the desert (expedition of Scaurus, 63 b.c. ); King Aretas retained his whole possessions, including Damascus, as a Roman vassal.

As “allies” of the Romans the Nabataeans continued to flourish throughout the first Christian century. Their power extended far into Arabia, particularly along the coast of the Red Sea; and Petra was a meeting-place of many nations, though the importance of its commerce was diminished by the rise of the Eastern trade-route from Myoshormus to Coptus on the Nile. Under the Roman peace they lost their warlike habits, and were a sober, acquisitive, orderly people, wholly intent on trade. They had now agriculture and houses of stone, and were not unacquainted with foreign luxuries and arts (Strabo, xvi. 4). Such a people might have long been a valuable bulwark between Rome and the wild hordes of the desert but for the short-sighted cupidity of Trajan, who reduced Petra and broke up the Nabataean nationality (105 a.d.). The new Arab invaders who soon pressed forward into their seats found the remnants of the Nabataeans transformed into fellahin, and speaking Aramaic like their neighbours. Hence Nabataeans became the Arabic name for Aramaeans, whether in Syria or'Irâk, a fact which was misinterpreted by Quatremère into a theory that the Nabataeans were originally Aramaean immigrants from Babylonia. More recent inquiry has shown this view to be quite false. The Nabataeans were true Arabs—as the proper names on their inscriptions show—who came under the influence of Aramaean civilization. See especially Nöldeke in Z. D. Μ. G., xvii. 705 sq., xxv. 122 sq.

For the inscriptions and coins of the Nabataeans consult De Luynes in Remιe Numism., 1858; Levy in Z. D. Μ. G., xiv. 363 sq.; De Vogué, Mil. d'Arch. Or., 1868, Syrie Centrale, 1866-77, and Inscr. Sémitiques, 1868—77. The character of De Vogué’s inscriptions from the Haurân appears to be the parent of the Cufic Arabic. The so-called Fdlcιha Nabatiya, or “Nabataean agriculture,” which professes to be an Arabic translation by Ibn-Wahshiya from an ancient Nabataean source (MSS. in Leyden and elsewhere), is a forgery of the 10th century. See Gutschmid in Z. D. Μ. G., XV. 1 sq. ; and Nöldeke, Ibid., xxix. 445 sq.