Nabataean [Script and language]

The Nabataean script and language are a local variety of Aramaic which developed in the Near East after the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great in 330. This entry assesses the distribution of Nabataean inscriptions in the Arabian Peninsula and touches upon their characteristics, one of which is the relatively large number of Arabic loanwords they contain.

Nabataean (or Nabataean Aramaic) is the name given to the language and script used by the Nabataeans, an Arab tribe present in southern Jordan, in the region of Petra, from the late fourth century BCE onwards. The members of this tribe established a kingdom reaching Damascus in the north at its peak (between 84 and 72 BCE), and the Ḥijāz, namely the area of al-Ḥijr/Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ, ancient Hegra, in the south (from the mid-first century BCE onwards), and may have extended as far south as the region of Medina. This kingdom remained independent until 106 CE, when it was turned into the Roman province of Arabia.

It has long been suggested that the Nabataeans spoke Arabic rather than Aramaic and this hypothesis now tends to be confirmed. They wrote however in one of the local varieties of the Aramaic languages and scripts in the Near East after the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great in 330. After that, Greek became the language of the government, thus depriving Aramaic of the central control that had maintained its unity in previous centuries. The choice of Aramaic by the Nabataeans and other populations in the southern Levant is probably due to the fact that Imperial Aramaic had become the only written language of prestige in the western provinces of the Achaemenid Empire and their margins, thus superseding others. Note that other examples of local varieties of Aramaic in the Arabian Peninsula are the so-called Gulf Aramaic and Taymāʾ Aramaic. The latter developed in the region of Taymāʾ in the two centuries prior to the Christian era and possibly continued to be used until the first century CE.

Although it presents several remarkable marks of Arabic influence, the language and syntax of Nabataean Aramaic remained relatively close to Imperial Aramaic. As for the script, it became characterised by a lengthening and stylisation of the letters and a more systematic use of the ligatures. A cursive version of Nabataean script is presently only known from ten or so private legal documents from the Dead Sea region written on papyri, dated to the end of the first-beginning of the second century CE. Finally, Nabataean script is the direct ancestor of Arabic script, which developed from Nabataean between the third and the fifth centuries CE (see Nabataeo-Arabic).

The number of Nabataean inscriptions in the Arabian Peninsula increases year after year, and recent excavation or survey projects continue to yield new texts. In the inventory undertaken by the author in 2013, based on all the publications and documentation made available by other scholars (for the regions of al-ʿUlā, Taymāʾ, Dūmat al-Jandal and Najrān), the exact number of inscriptions known so far reached 1800, which can be compared with the 967 listed by S. al-Theeb in 2010. There are now certainly more than 2000. Most of them are simple signatures of individuals associated with a desire for safety and a few are dedications of monuments. Of particular importance is the group of thirty-three legal texts carved on the facades of the monumental tombs at Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ, ancient Hegra, dated to between the turn of the Christian era and 75 CE. Finally, the Arabian Peninsula yielded some bilinguals, the most famous of which are the Greek-Nabataean inscription dated to between 166 and 169 CE from the temple of Ruwāfa, southwest of Tabūk, and the Sabaic-Nabataean bilingual inscription from the temple of Almaqah at Ṣirwāḥ, 40 km west of Maʾrib in South Arabia, dated to 6/7 BCE. We also know of several Ancient North Arabian-Nabataean bilinguals.

Most of the sites with Nabataean inscriptions are concentrated in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula, with clusters around and between the cities of Tabūk, al-ʿUlā, Taymāʾ and al-Jawf/Sakākā, i.e., the largest oases of Northwest Arabia, covering an area of ca. 700 km east-west and almost 500 km north-south. At the northern end of the Wādī Sirḥān, one inscription was discovered at Ithra while a few others are indicated to have been recorded near al-Qurayyāt. Outside this vast area, not only is the number of sites very small but the number of inscriptions within them is limited.

Nabataean inscriptions were also found in the Qaṣīm area (northwest of Burayda and near Ghāf al-Jawāʾ, at the site of ʿArījīn Manṣūr which is also known as al-Naṣla) and around Medina (as-Suwaydira and al-Furaysh). The inscription from Ranya, half-way between Medina and Najrān, and those from the area of Ḥimà, north of Najrān (Jabal Kawkab, al-Khushayba, Wādī Shisʿāʾ and Wādī Ṣammāʾ), were probably carved along the ancient north-south incense road (see Caravan trade). Finally, there is a Nabataean text in Qaryat al-Fāw while the southernmost Nabataean inscription comes from Ṣirwāḥ.

An interesting feature of the Nabataean inscriptions from Arabia is that they contain more Arabic loanwords than any other region of the Nabataean kingdom. The presence of Arabic loanwords in Nabataean inscriptions in general is one of the various arguments put forward to suggest that the Nabataeans spoke Arabic rather than Aramaic. If this was indeed the case, the proportionally greater number of Arabic loanwords in Arabia may indicate that the Nabataean Aramaic imprint affected this region less profoundly than others further north. A few Aramaic words such as šlm, “may he be safe”, dkyr, “may he be remembered”, and br, “son of”, were so widely used in the countless graffiti carved on the rocks that they remained in use, with limited changes in the way they were traced, almost like ideograms, well after the fall of the Nabataean kingdom in 106 CE. Note for example that the Nabataean br was still used instead of the Arabic bn until shortly after Hijra in 622 CE.

Laïla Nehmé

References and suggested reading

• Healey, J.F. 2009. Aramaic Inscriptions & Documents of the Roman Period (Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, IV). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Macdonald, M.C.A. 2010. Ancient Arabia and the Written Word, in M.C.A. Macdonald (ed.) The Development of Arabic as a Written Language (Supplement to the PSAS, 40): 5–28. Oxford: Archaeopress.
• Macdonald, M.C.A. (ed.) 2018. Languages, Scripts and their Uses in Ancient North Arabia. Papers from the Special Session of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held on 5 August 2017 (Supplement to the PSAS, 40). Oxford: Archaeopress.
• Nebes, N. 2009. Die Nabatäer in Südarabien. Antike Welt 40/1: 52–53.
• Nehmé, L. (ed.) 2018. The Darb al-Bakrah. A Caravan Route in North-West Arabia Discovered by Ali I. al-Ghabban. Catalogue of the inscriptions (Series of Archaeological Refereed Studies, 50). Riyadh, Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage. Online at: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02096586v1
• al-Theeb, S. 2010. Mudawwanat al-nuqūš al-nabaṭiyyah fī ʾl-mamlakah al-ʿ arabiyyah al-saʿūdiyyah. Riyadh: Dārat al-malik ʿabdulʿazīz.

_{Alternate spellings: Nabatean, Nabataean Aramaic, Nabaṭ, Nabat}