[2] Their settlements—most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu (present-day Petra, Jordan)[3]—gave the name Nabatene (Ancient Greek: Ναβατηνή, romanized: Nabatēnḗ) to the Arabian borderland that stretched from the Euphrates to the Red Sea.

The Nabateans emerged as a distinct civilization and political entity between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC,[4] with their kingdom centered around a loosely controlled trading network that brought considerable wealth and influence across the ancient world.

Described as fiercely independent by contemporary Greco-Roman accounts, the Nabataeans were annexed into the Roman Empire by Emperor Trajan in 106 AD.

About 50 BC Greek historian Diodorus Siculus cites Hieronymus in his report[clarification needed] and adds the following: "Just as the Seleucids had tried to subdue them, so the Romans made several attempts to get their hands on that lucrative trade.

[11][better source needed] It was this king who, after putting down a local rebellion, invaded and occupied the Nabataean towns of Moab and Gilead and imposed a tribute.

In 62 BC, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus accepted a bribe of 300 talents to lift the siege of Petra, partly because of the difficult terrain and the fact that he had run out of supplies.

[14] After an earthquake in Judaea, the Nabateans rebelled and invaded Judea, but Herod at once crossed the Jordan River to Philadelphia (modern Amman), and both sides set up camp.

Its power extended far into Arabia along the Red Sea to Yemen, and Petra was a cosmopolitan marketplace, though its commerce was diminished by the rise of the Eastern trade route from Myos Hormos to Coptos on the Nile.

Under the Pax Romana, the Nabataeans lost their warlike and nomadic habits and became a sober, acquisitive, orderly people, wholly intent on trade and agriculture.

The kingdom was a bulwark between Rome and the wild hordes of the desert except in the time of Trajan, who reduced Petra and converted the Nabataean client state into the Roman province of Arabia Petraea.

They are ascribed to an auxiliary military unit drawn from the Roman-allied Thamud tribe and were built to describe the temple they were inscribed in and to recognize the authority of the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.

[27] Diodorus Siculus (book II) describes them as a strong tribe of some 10,000 warriors, preeminent among the nomads of Arabia, eschewing agriculture, fixed houses, and the use of wine, but adding to pastoral pursuits a profitable trade with the seaports in frankincense, myrrh and spices from Arabia Felix, as well as a trade with Egypt in bitumen from the Dead Sea.

Their arid country was their best safeguard, for the bottle-shaped cisterns for rain-water which they excavated in the rocky or clay-rich soil were carefully concealed from invaders.

[27] Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's Kitab al-Tabikh, the earliest known Arabic cookbook, contains a recipe for fermented Nabatean water bread (khubz al-ma al-nabati).

The yeast-leavened bread is made with a high quality wheat flour called samidh that is finely milled and free of bran and is baked in a tandoor.

Archeological evidence strongly suggest that the Nabataean women had a role in the social and political life by the 1st century AD, which is shown by the fact that Nabatean queens were depicted on coins, both independently and together with their spouse the king.

These scarves were loosely woven and sported fringes at the bottom.The upper class of Nabataean society, what can be seen on coins, show an even stronger Greek and Roman influence.

"[37] Historians such as Irfan Shahîd,[38] Warwick Ball,[39] Robert G. Hoyland,[40] Michael C. A. Macdonald,[41] and others[42] believe Nabataeans spoke Arabic as their native language.

John F. Healy states "Nabataeans normally spoke a form of Arabic, while, like the Persians etc., they used Aramaic for formal purposes and especially for inscriptions.

[44] The extent of Nabataean trade resulted in cross-cultural influences that reached as far as the Red Sea coast of southern Arabia.

[46] The name Dushara is from the Arabic "Dhu ash-Shara": which simply means "the one of Shara", a mountain range southeast of Petra also known as Mount Seir.

Numerous Nabatean bas-relief busts of the northern Syrian goddess Atargatis were identified by Nelson Glueck at Khirbet et-Tannû.

[46] Other gods worshipped in Nabatea during this period were Isis, Balshamin and Obodat[50] Sacrifices of animals were common, and Porphyry's De Abstenentia, written in the 3rd century, states that in Dūmah a boy was sacrificed annually and was buried underneath an altar.