At last a conspiracy, into which the principal engineer of Khalid, Hassan the Nabataean, had been drawn, succeeded in inciting Hisham against Khalid.
He fled for refuge to a Nabataean prince, who murdered him and sent his head to Ptolemy, who had been mortall y wounded in the engagement.
In fear of reprisals Antipas (or Antipater), the Idumaean, his counsellor, played on the fears of Hyrcanus and persuaded him to buy the aid of the Nabataean Arabs with promises.
Of this type there exist close parallels in the tomb-towers at el-Ilejr in north Arabia, which bear long Nabataean inscriptions,' and so supply a date for the corresponding monuments at Petra.
Scharer in his sketch of Nabataean history appended to Gesch.
The language spoken at Palmyra was a dialect of western Aramaic, and belongs to the same group as Nabataean and the Aramaic spoken in Egypt.
The Nabataean Arabs and the Greeks of Scythopolis befriended them, but the province generally was hostile.
The Nabataean inscriptions (see Semitic Languages) are collected in the Corpus Inscr.
The Nabataean inscriptions belong to a different epoch and a different style.
The Nabataean type starts from the simple pylon-tomb with a door set in a tower crowned by a parapet ornament, in imitation of the front of a dwelling-house; then, after passing through various stages, the full Nabataean type is reached, retaining all the native features and at the same time exhibiting characteristics which are partly Egyptian and partly Greek.
The region of Damascus, hitherto a dependency, and the last remaining fragment of the Jewish kingdom, were incorporated with Syria; Bostra and Petra were permanently occupied, and a great portion of the Nabataean kingdom was organized as the Roman province of Arabia.
They might have long been a bulwark between Rome and the wild hordes of the desert but for the shortsighted cupidity of Trajan, who reduced Petra and broke up the Nabataean nationality (105 A.D.).
This has been the origin of the long succession of Semitic waves - Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Hebrew, Nabataean, Moslem - that have flowed over Mesopotamia and Palestine; there is every reason to suppose that they will be followed by others, and that the Arab will remain master at the end, as he was in the beginning.
Towards the close of the 2nd century B.C., when the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms were equally depressed, the Nabataean kingdom came to the front; under Aretas III.
Two types may be distinguished broadly, the Nabataean and the Graeco-Roman.
We have, then, as evidence for the earliest period, the simple pylon-tombs, which belong to the pre-Hellenic age; how far back in this stage the Nabataean settlement goes we do no.t know, but not farther than the 6th century B.C. A period follows in which the dominant civilization combines Greek, Egyptian and Syrian elements, clearly pointing to the age of the Ptolemies.