Shivta (Hebrew: שבטה), originally Sobata (Greek: Σόβατα) or Subeita (Arabic: شبطا), is an ancient city in the Negev Desert of Israel located 43 kilometers southwest of Beersheba.

[3] Shivta was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in June 2005, as part of the Incense Route and the Desert Cities of the Negev, together with Haluza/Elusa, Avdat and Mamshit/Mampsis.

[14] Probably as a result of these two events, international trade with luxury goods such as Gaza wine almost grounded to a halt, and in Shivta and other Negev settlements grape production again gave way to subsistence farming, focused on barley and wheat.

[14] This seems to indicate that the wine industry of the Negev could well be sustained over centuries through appropriate agricultural techniques and in spite of the arid climate, but that the grape monoculture was economically unsustainable in the long run.

[15] This graffito is one of many such inscriptions found along pilgrimage routes, particularly in the Sinai Peninsula, where large groups of Armenian pilgrims traveled in the sixth and seventh centuries.

[18] Edward Henry Palmer came in 1870 and the following year he published the first official description,[19] while Alois Musil's 1901 visit resulted in the publication of the first photos of the ruins.

[20] A team from the École Biblique in Jerusalem including famed researchers Antonin Jaussen, Raphaël Savignac and Louis-Hugues Vincent studied a few aspects of the site in 1904, Theodor Kühtreiber added a few observations in 1912.

[22] During the Great War, a German team of researchers (Theodor Wiegand, Carl Watzinger and Walter Bachmann), part of the Deutsch-Türkisches Denkmalschutzkommando [de] ("German-Turkish Command for Cultural Heritage Protection"), studied the site in 1916.

[26] Much of the archaeological information is lost for good, not least due to a fire on 7 October 1938 at the expedition house that consumed all the collected architectural decoration and dig notes.

[32] In the 1960s, botanist Michael Evenari studied the economy of Shivta and water collection in its arid environment, his methods of experimental archaeology offering important insights into subsistence farming in the Negev desert.