Nabataean architecture

Their settlements—most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu (present-day Petra, Jordan)—gave the name Nabatene (Ancient Greek: Ναβατηνή, Nabatēnḗ) to the Arabian borderland that stretched from the Euphrates to the Red Sea.

In the Nabataean period, Mampsis was an important station on the Incense Road, connecting Southern Arabia through Edom, the Arabah and Ma'ale Akrabim, to the Mediterranean ports, as well as to Jerusalem via Beersheba and Hebron.

The Incense Route - Desert Cities in the Negev, including Mampsis, Haluza, Avdat, and Shivta, were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in June 2005.

An inscription that reads “This is the wall which ... and windows which Taymu bar ... built for ... Dushara and the rest of the gods of Bostra” is located on what is thought to be this temple.

[21] A little farther from the Treasury, at the foot of the mountain called en-Nejr, is a massive theatre, positioned so as to bring the greatest number of tombs within view.

Almost enclosing it on three sides are rose-coloured mountain walls, divided into groups by deep fissures and lined with knobs cut from the rock in the form of towers.

Originally said to be a market area,[24] excavations at the site have allowed scholars to identify it as an elaborate Nabataean garden, which included a large swimming pool, an island-pavilion, and an intricate hydraulic system.

These tombs are simple in style but elaborated in function, often featuring steps, platforms, libation holes, cisterns, water channels and sometimes banqueting halls.

[33] In 2010, it was revealed that a biclinium, now known colloquially as the Painted House, at Little Petra in Jordan had extensive ceiling frescoes, which had long been concealed under soot from Bedouin campfires, and other inscriptions in the ensuing centuries.

They depict, in extensive detail and with a variety of media, including glazes and gold leaf, imagery such as grapevines and putti associated with the Greek god Dionysus, suggesting the space may have been used for wine consumption, perhaps with visiting merchants.

Instead of architectural embellishment, the walls and vaulted ceiling of this room exhibit a complex program of intertwining vines, flowers, figures, several varieties of local birds, and insects.

Several erotes—small winged gods associated with love and occasionally the cultivation of wine—are seen participating in viticulture management, using ladders and pruning hooks, carrying baskets of gathered grapes, and defending the vines from scavenging birds.

The features of the figural composition, including the almond eyes and round chins, have parallels with other pieces of Hellenistic painting and mosaic, while the floral and faunal subjects are distinctly local.

The engineering system of water supplies is the most important achievement of the Nabataean civilization in their capital, this made life possible in the dry region of the Jordanian desert.

The numerous traces of cisterns dug in sandstone or limestone, attributed to the Edomites, from the middle of the first millennium BC and probably earlier, generally have the shape of bottles, a narrow neck for the opening, an enlargement in the depth then[47]...” For the capture of the water, its filtration and storage, its transport sometimes over long distances, the Arab Nabatean hydraulicians and plumbers of Petra were inspired by techniques already used a few millennia earlier, in the cities of the Indus Valley.

[63] This simple filtration system allowed better conservation of water for domestic needs, especially in the case of buried storage tanks; it avoided solid deposits in pipes and gutters.

[67] Several successive cisterns can be connected to each other by their overflow, both to allow a more efficient form of decantation, but also to increase water storage in the case of a high concentration of habitat.

[69] Diodorus of Sicily, a 1st-century-BC ancient Greek historian, talked in his writings about the Nabateans facing an enemy, a description which corresponds quite well to the current knowledge that academics have on the buried cisterns around Petra: "...they fled into the desert which serves them of a fortress: the lack of water makes it inaccessible to others, but for them alone who have dug reservoirs in the earth covered with a lime plaster, it is a safe haven.

[...] After having filled these reservoirs with rainwater, they plug the openings and level the ground around them, leaving signs known to them, but imperceptible to others[70]..." The distribution of water in Petra had a varying morphology and used several techniques, some simple and others more elaborate.

This concept of the dual design of the supply and distribution networks ensured that water can come from different sources, depending on the variations in spring flows and rainfall, allowing the filling of reservoirs and cisterns.

At the end of the Siq, where the Khazneh can be seen, on one of the sides of about fifty meters in length, the remains of this same terracotta pipe bringing water to downtown Petra are still visible.

Care is taken to ensure that the progress of the fumes takes place in a constantly ascending movement; this condition agrees in the most natural way with the sloping arrangement of the riffles of the basins...”[104] Terracotta slabs used to rest on the pillars and form both the basic structure of the floor, a kind of formwork, which supported a thick layer of tile mortar.

This principle of heating was comfortable for the visitors of the thermal baths, it made it possible to maintain a constant temperature, long after the end of the fuelling of the hearth, without stopping it and allowing its fast resumption the following day.

[118] Vitruvius in the 1st century BC, in his book Volume I on the heating of the thermal baths, gives the explanations to the way this system worked: “...The hearth is installed in the basement.

[121] In 1998, a team of archaeologists and engineers reconstructed a set of thermal baths, using materials and techniques from the Roman period: "...This experience has made it possible to better understand many aspects of the construction and operation public baths, including the unresolved relationship between the tubuli (carrying the hot air) and the smoke exhaust ducts...”[122] The most economical design had the hot air tubuli completely separate from the fireplace.

Once the trials were complete and all the data collected, the engineers found that the method of blocking off three out of four tubuli columns and leaving the last remaining open proved to be effective.

The slaves had to ensure the permanent supply of the hearth according to the hours of use, in order to maintain a pleasant temperature in the premises and in the baths at the time of their occupation, but keeping the costs of using fuel to a minimum.

That of Bir-Shana Moghane, shows the flaming embers, to underline its link with the hearth of the thermal baths - praefurnium - and also includes a fire iron in the other hand.

Artisans in the Nabataean city of Petra, in modern Jordan, extended the Western Asian tradition, carving their temples and tombs into the yellowish-orange rock that defines the canyons and gullies of the region.

Small-scale production of concrete-like materials was pioneered by the Nabatean traders who occupied and controlled a series of oases and developed a small empire in the regions of southern Syria and northern Jordan from the 4th century BC.