Testimonials
Hello

USA Travelers: "This is an awesome experience"

1
- 18
Trip Advisor
TripAdvisor
1194 reviews of Memphis Tours Egypt in Cairo
Memphis Tours Egypt
© 2012 TripAdvisor LLC
powered by TripAdvisor

the Nabataeans in Sinai's history

The Nabataeans

The importance of the Nabataeans in Sinai's history was overlooked for a long time. In the third or fourth century BC they founded an empire in the area of their capital Petra in Jordan that during its peak extended over northwestern Saudi Arabia and the Negev. The Nabataeans were Hellenistically-influenced Arabs and extremely successful traders. They left conspicuous traces in Sinai: rock paintings and inscriptions decorate countless boulders and rock walls, especially in the region of the sandstone belt. Collections of such rock paintings, for example in Wadi Maktab, mark the stopping-places along the ancient trade routes. Inscriptions in Bir Nasib verify that the Nabataeans continued copper mining until the Roman period. Their wealth provoked Roman greed and was the main reason for the campaign of conquest in 106 BC. The Nabataeans apparently remained active traders, though, as their rock inscriptions can be dated into Byzantine time.

Protosinaitic Script

Together with ancient Egyptian and younger Nabataean inscriptions, on rocks as well as in the temple ruins of Serabit al-Khadim can be seen what appear to be arbitrarily scribbled characters that upon closer examination prove to be hieroglyphs. What excited linguists soon after the discovery of these characters was the realization that here was an alphabetic script consisting only of consonants. Today, it is acknowledged that this so-called protosinaitic script was a preliminary stage in the development of the alphabetic scripts of the Hebrews, Aramaeans, and Phoenicians. From the Phoenicians the Greeks derived their script, which was the basis for our Latin alphabet. The protosinaitic script was presumably used by Canaanitic miners and is therefore not of Nabataean origin. Sinai thus holds an archaeological find of the greatest significance for human civilization.
Build Your Trip