Nabataean Trade, Caravans and Markets

Nabataean commerce connected Arabian producers with consumers in the southern Levant and the Mediterranean. Petra stood within routes linking the Red Sea, inland Arabia, southern Syria and Gaza. Moving valuable goods through this region depended on water, animals, supplies and people who knew the road.

Incense helped make this commerce profitable, but trade also involved other materials and everyday provisions. Settlements supplied travellers, farmers sold produce and merchants established connections abroad. The economy combined long journeys with the local work that made those journeys possible.

On this page6 sections

Incense, bitumen and other goods

Frankincense and myrrh are aromatic resins collected from trees growing in parts of southern Arabia and northeastern Africa. Collectors made cuts in the bark and gathered the resin that hardened around them. Burning frankincense released a fragrant smoke used in religious offerings; both resins also had other valued uses in the ancient world.

These products could travel far from their places of production. Their value came from demand in consuming regions and the work involved in collecting, transporting and selling them. Nabataean communities occupied important sections of routes linking those regions, handling goods and providing services along the way.

The historian Diodorus records frankincense, myrrh and silver among the booty taken during an attack on the Nabataeans in 312 BCE. He also describes their collection of bitumen from the Dead Sea. Bitumen is a naturally occurring dark, sticky material used for sealing and other purposes. In his account, it was sold to Egypt for embalming.

Different commodities therefore connected Nabataean traders with different customers. Luxury aromatics travelled alongside a wider economy in materials, food and equipment. Archaeological finds at roadside establishments include imported vessels, glass and provisions, showing what could accompany people as well as what they carried for sale.

Routes between inland settlements and ports

Petra’s connections ran in several directions. Routes crossed the Negev toward Gaza, reached north toward Syrian markets and linked the interior with ports on the Red Sea. At Hegra, an oasis settlement in northwestern Arabia, groundwater and cultivation helped support people using the inland corridor.

The geographer Strabo describes aromatics moving from Leuke Kome, a Red Sea port, to Petra and onward to Rhinocolura, near modern el-Arish on the Mediterranean. His account makes the transfer between sea and land explicit: a cargo arriving at a port could continue on pack animals to an inland centre and then toward another coastal market.

The first-century CE sailing guide known as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea also describes Leuke Kome. The Erythraean Sea was the writer’s term for a broad maritime region including the Red Sea and adjoining waters. The guide places the port on a route toward Petra and the Nabataean king Malichus.

It describes a customs officer taking a quarter of incoming merchandise as duty, alongside an officer and soldiers. This is a specific account of a port’s arrangements. It helps explain how a transfer point could combine commercial access, taxation and protection. The exact location of Leuke Kome and the political interpretation of its officials remain debated.

The work of a caravan

A caravan brought travellers and pack animals together for a journey. Camels were particularly useful across dry country because they could carry loads and cope with conditions that made frequent watering difficult. Their advantages still depended on care, feeding and the practical management of a load.

Goods had to be packed securely, with weight balanced across the animal. Loading, unloading and checking damaged containers were recurring tasks. Travellers also needed food for themselves and provisions for their animals. A route was usable when its stages connected dependable resources as well as the desired destinations.

Landscape shaped those stages. Steep approaches slowed movement; sandy or rocky ground affected the animals’ work; a water point could determine where a group stopped. Local guides and people supplying provisions made knowledge of a region commercially valuable. The road connected producers, carriers and customers through a chain of practical activities.

Roadside buildings and supplies

Excavations along the Negev routes show what travellers encountered at particular stops. At Neqarot, a roadside residence was in use in the early first century CE, before Roman annexation. Its finds include pottery and other objects used in living and eating, while animal bones and plant remains indicate provisions available along the road.

The supply network continued under Roman government. At Shaar Ramon, an establishment founded in the first century CE reached its greatest activity in the early third century. Rooms surrounding a courtyard provided places for staying and working. Its refuse contains food remains and imported objects from the Roman period.

Such places needed supplies from their surrounding region or from farther away. Grain could be stored and prepared; dried fruit travelled well; animals provided meat and other products. The remains of meals and containers turn a line on a route map into a setting where people stopped, ate and replenished what they needed.

The dates also reveal development through time. A later fort at Neqarot belongs to a different phase from the earlier residence. Roadside occupation and supply continued after the monarchy ended in 106 CE, with some facilities expanding in subsequent centuries.

Markets, land and commercial agreements

Exchange also occurred within settlements and at gatherings. In Diodorus’s account of 312 BCE, many Nabataean men were away at a market assembly when their rock refuge was attacked. The gathering brought dispersed people into contact for trading, while their absence created an opportunity for the raid.

More settled economic life involved property and production as well as portable cargo. Orchards, fields and workshops supplied goods whose sale could be agreed in advance. A transaction required people to identify what was being transferred, what was owed and when an obligation would be fulfilled.

Babatha’s archive gives detailed examples from the Dead Sea region, principally under Roman rule. Contracts made in 130 CE concern produce from three date orchards at Maoza and relate to her recovery of debts from her husband’s estate. They connect a future harvest with money owed and competing claims over property. Earlier Nabataean Aramaic deeds in the same archive preserve land transactions from before annexation.

Such records show why scribes, retained documents and access to legal authorities could matter to economic life. An agreement continued to have value when an owner died, a payment was disputed or a family needed to establish its title to land.

Merchants beyond Nabataean territory

Nabataean commercial connections extended beyond areas ruled by their kings. At Puteoli, modern Pozzuoli near Naples, a community maintained a sanctuary of Dushara within the Roman port district. Underwater investigation in 2023 located two rooms, marble altars and Latin dedications to the god.

The building used materials and construction forms familiar in its Italian setting, while recesses in the altars probably held sacred stones associated with Nabataean worship. Its users could honour their god through Latin words understood by other people in the port. The sanctuary gives a physical setting to a community participating in Mediterranean commerce far from Petra.

That wider reach depended on successive connections. Arabian goods, desert routes, Levantine ports and Italian merchants formed parts of overlapping networks. Within them, Nabataean people contributed transport, provisions, local knowledge and enduring relationships with buyers and suppliers.