Nabataean Worship, Communal Meals and Funerals

Nabataean religious life involved approaching sacred places, presenting offerings, gathering for meals and caring for the dead. Some activities took place in major temples, while others centred on a niche cut into rock, an altar or a family tomb. Inscriptions identify people who established a monument or were entitled to use it; rooms and objects show how a gathering could be accommodated.

At Petra and Hegra, surviving spaces connect worship and burial with practical arrangements. A sacred image needed a place where it could be approached; a dining group needed seating and space for serving; a family tomb needed rules for successive burials. These arrangements help explain what people did in the settings they created.

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Sacred stones and places of approach

A betyl was a sacred stone associated with the presence of a deity. It could be a relatively plain block, a stone with schematic facial features or a form carved into a rock niche. The object gave worshippers a focus for approaching and honouring the divine. Its religious role came from the setting and the deity with whom it was associated, rather than from resemblance to a human body alone.

Niches and dedications could mark sacred locations along paths or within a sanctuary. Carving a niche into the rock established a place for an image; an inscription could connect it with a person or group. Such acts helped turn part of the landscape into a recognised setting for worship.

At Hegra, the rocky area of Jabal Ithlib contains niches and a chamber known as the Diwan. The chamber has benches along three sides, accommodating a gathering around an open centre. Its association with surrounding sacred features places communal activity within a religious landscape, away from the town’s central residential area.

Offerings and temple spaces

An offering transferred a valued item or substance to a divine recipient. A liquid offering, usually called a libation, involved pouring rather than drinking. Burning incense transformed an aromatic material through fire, producing smoke and scent as part of the act of worship.

Strabo, a Greek geographer writing around the beginning of the first century CE, describes Nabataean rooftop altars where people poured offerings and burned frankincense daily. His account gives a specific sequence of actions in a particular kind of space. It also connects a traded aromatic with its use in religious life.

Larger sanctuaries organised approach through built architecture. Petra’s Temple of the Winged Lions had an entrance porch leading into the main sacred room, or cella. Within it stood a raised podium reached by stairs. This arrangement directed movement toward an elevated focus inside the building.

The temple contained niches and religious objects, including a stone image with prominent eyes and an inscription naming the goddess of an individual. Winged lions decorated column capitals, and colourful paint and plaster enriched the interior. The setting combined architecture, images and objects through which worshippers encountered the sanctuary. The temple’s main goddess may have been al-Uzza or Allat; the surviving inscription identifies her as the goddess of Hayyan, son of Nybat.

Gathering and eating together

Dining rooms brought people together around food in a recognisable arrangement. A triclinium had dining places on three sides of a central space, while a biclinium had them on two. Benches allowed participants to recline; the centre and entrance accommodated serving and movement.

The first-century Painted Biclinium at Little Petra has two benches and a vaulted alcove decorated with vines, birds, flowers and small winged figures. The room supplied an elaborate setting for a meal. Its imagery evoked abundance and vine-growing, connecting the act of dining with the visual environment surrounding the guests.

Strabo describes Nabataean communal meals in groups of thirteen accompanied by two female singers. He also describes royal drinking gatherings at which the king sometimes served the guests. In this account, dining combined food, entertainment and hospitality.

Rock-cut dining rooms also occur in funerary settings. At Petra’s Wadi Farasa, a separate banqueting room faces a tomb across a courtyard. The shared complex connected a place for the dead with one where living visitors could assemble. Seating and open space made repeated gatherings possible near the burial chamber.

Bodies, chambers and successive burials

Nabataean tombs ranged from relatively simple burial places to chambers behind elaborate façades. A rock-cut chamber protected the bodies within a durable space that relatives could revisit. Some chambers received successive burials, allowing a burial place to remain associated with a family or entitled group over time.

Excavations of first-century BCE and first-century CE tombs on Petra’s North Ridge have found multiple individuals in some burial spaces, including adults and children. Lamps, jewellery and ceramic objects accompanied the remains. A small ceramic camel was among the objects recovered, placing a familiar animal within the material setting of burial.

Food could also be placed with the dead. Research on plants from North Ridge tombs identified wheat, barley, lentils, olives, grapes, figs and dates; most of the relevant deposits were interpreted as deliberate food offerings. These finds concern provision within the burial setting. They differ from rubbish left by visitors who ate in a dining room outside the tomb.

A tomb’s rules and its future users

Hegra’s inscriptions explain how particular burial places were protected. The tomb commissioned by Kamkam and her daughter Kulaybat around the turn of the Common Era provided for them and their descendants. Its text identifies the family claim and establishes conditions for other people seeking access.

It prohibits unauthorised burial and the sale, pledge or gift of the tomb, as well as the removal of a body or part of one. Divine curses and financial penalties reinforce the restrictions. At the same time, written authorisation from either commissioner could permit another person’s burial. The rule provided a way for the owners to extend access while keeping control of the monument.

Such an inscription guided future use. It could be read when a new burial was proposed or when an action threatened the tomb’s integrity. Naming deities in the penalties connected a practical property arrangement with religious authority.