Piecing Together the Religion of the Nabataeans

Abstract

The legacy of one ancient Arabian people, the Nabataeans, is rich in material remains: the rock-carved monuments of Petra, their delicately crafted pottery vessels, and huge desert cisterns and aqueducts, to name only a few. Unlike their neighbors to the north in ancient Judea, the Nabataeans did not leave a written history of themselves, and what is known about them is mainly derived from non-Nabataean sources: the reports of Greeks and Romans and the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus. Our knowledge of the religion of the Nabataeans must be pieced together from fragmentary historical and epigraphic evidence as well as the mute evidence provided by the archeological record.