ON THE ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE NABATAEANS

Abstract

The social and economic development of the Nabataean Kingdom was one of the most remarkable facts in the Hellenistic Near East, whose influence, direct or indirect, would be found especially in the amazing diffusion of Oriental merchants and ideas in the Roman Empire, and, on the other hand, the process of sedentarization illustrates a pattern of the progress of the ancient society, which is also useful for sociological studies.
In my former article which appeared in the “Shigaku” (Journal of the Mita Historical Society, 33), I studied the birth of the flourishing kingdom from a tribal community in which they originally led a nomadic life, and asserted that its development was mainly due to its accustomed caravan trade. And the present paper treats the economic aspect of the kingdom in relation to its commercial activities and systems, and confirms that agriculture and cattle breeding were just a secondary cause of its prosperity.