Nabataean Pottery, Sculpture and Painting

Nabataean artists worked with clay, sandstone, plaster and colour to furnish houses, shape religious spaces and mark burial places. Their most recognisable products include thin painted bowls and the rock-cut façades of Petra and Hegra. The wider range also included cooking vessels, carved figures, sacred stones, decorated column capitals and painted interiors.

These objects belonged to different settings. A bowl passed between a potter and a customer; a tomb façade presented a family to people approaching its burial place; a temple image became part of worship. At Petra in southern Jordan, the combination of excavated pottery, architectural fragments and surviving painted rooms helps explain how these crafts contributed to life in the city.

On this page5 sections

Clay, the wheel and the kiln

Pottery began with clay that had to be prepared for shaping. Large inclusions would make it difficult to draw out a thin, even wall, so fine vessels required carefully selected and worked material. Water made the clay pliable, while the potter controlled its thickness and profile. On a rotating wheel, pressure from the hands could raise or spread the clay into a vessel with a circular form.

The especially delicate Nabataean bowls were shallow and light, sometimes with walls only about 1.5 millimetres thick. Producing them required control during shaping, drying and handling. A soft vessel could distort; one dried unevenly could crack. The finished profile reflects a sequence of skilled operations.

Firing made the dried clay into a durable ceramic. Pottery workshops and kilns are known around Wadi Musa near Petra. Fuel, air and heat had to be managed so that the vessels hardened successfully. The familiar pink or reddish body of painted fineware is associated with iron-bearing clay fired in an oxygen-rich environment. Chemical examination of a painted example has identified an iron-oxide pigment, hematite, in its decoration.

This fineware was part of a much larger ceramic industry. Cooking pots, jars and lamps met practical needs that differed from those of a delicate serving bowl. Their shapes accommodated heating, storage, pouring or an oil reservoir and wick. Nabataean craft production supplied the equipment of an ordinary household as well as objects chosen for their appearance.

Painted bowls and their use

Dark painted leaves, flowers and branching patterns stand out against the pale or reddish surfaces of many fine bowls. The painter could organise a design around the circular vessel, adapting repeated strokes to its rim and centre. A shallow open form allowed both the decoration and the contents to be seen from above.

These bowls were tableware. Their thin walls and open shapes suited serving and eating rather than storing a large quantity of grain or placing a pot over a fire. Decoration made an everyday act more elaborate, while the repeated production of recognisable forms supplied households and dining gatherings with a distinctive local product.

Changes in vessel shapes and painted designs also help archaeologists distinguish successive periods of occupation. Broken pottery accumulated in houses, workshops and rubbish deposits, often surviving where organic furnishings disappeared. At Petra’s residential terraces, pottery belongs to occupation before and after the Roman annexation of 106 CE. The craft did not cease when the kingdom’s government ended.

Floral designs on bowls coexisted with animals and human figures in Nabataean building decoration.

Stone carving and religious images

Sandstone gave carvers material for complete architectural fronts, reliefs and smaller objects. A rock-cut tomb required the removal of stone around the intended design. Columns, steps and projecting mouldings could be left attached to the cliff, while the chamber was excavated behind the façade. Tools used on Hegra’s tombs included picks and pointed or flat chisels, with finer finishing following the rougher work.

Inscriptions at Hegra sometimes name the mason alongside the tomb’s owner and legal provisions. The inscription on the tomb commissioned by Kamkam and her daughter Kulaybat, around the turn of the Common Era, names Wahballahi, son of Abdobodat, as its maker. Such records connect a surviving monument with an identified skilled worker and a particular commission.

Religious carving ranged from recognisable figures to sacred stones. A betyl was a stone associated with the presence of a deity. It might stand as a block or appear within a niche, sometimes with schematic facial features. Worshippers could approach and honour a divine presence through this form without requiring a fully modelled human body.

Petra’s Temple of the Winged Lions combined several kinds of imagery. Carved lions formed part of its column capitals, the decorated tops of columns. A stone image commonly called an eye idol had prominent facial features and an inscription identifying the goddess of a named individual. Proposals connecting the temple’s principal deity with al-Uzza or Allat remain interpretations; the inscription and the surrounding objects give a more direct account of how divine imagery occupied the sanctuary.

Painted and plastered interiors

The bare sandstone visible today can conceal how colourful Nabataean buildings once were. Plaster covered walls and could be shaped into raised ornament, a technique called stucco. Paint then supplied coloured surfaces, architectural effects and pictures. Together, these materials allowed builders to transform a room without carving every detail into its structural stone.

The early first-century CE mansion on Petra’s ez-Zantur terraces had elaborate painted and stucco interiors. Some decoration imitated masonry and architectural openings, creating the impression of surfaces or spaces beyond the actual wall. This was part of the experience of entering reception rooms and moving through a house designed for both residents and guests.

The Painted Biclinium at Little Petra provides another setting. A biclinium is a dining room with benches on two sides. In this first-century room, vines, birds, flowers and small winged figures decorate the vaulted alcove. The images surrounded a gathering in a space furnished for reclining and eating. Familiar Mediterranean imagery of vines and abundance was incorporated into a local rock-cut dining hall.

At the Temple of the Winged Lions, surviving fragments reveal colourful wall decoration, gilded details and stucco ornament including masks, heads and floral forms. Its decoration changed during the building’s use: earlier pictures were covered by later painted arrangements. An interior was therefore something that patrons could renew, rather than a single composition fixed for the building’s entire life.

Local crafts in a connected region

Nabataean artists used forms also familiar in the Greek, Roman and Egyptian worlds, including column orders, vine imagery and particular divine figures. These choices made sense in cities connected with neighbouring regions through trade, travel and royal relationships. They also offered patrons a broad range of ways to present hospitality, status or religious devotion.

The finished works were adapted to their setting. A column carved from a cliff performed a different architectural role from a freestanding column in a temple. Painted plaster enriched a constructed house, while a floral design followed the curved surface of a bowl. Materials, intended use and the patron’s commission all shaped the result.

Potters developed recognisable wares; masons named on inscriptions fulfilled specific commissions; decorators arranged colour and imagery for rooms with particular functions. Their products circulated through households, dining gatherings, sanctuaries and family burial places.