Crossword-Solution: NABATAEI 8 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 10

The country of the Nabataei, of which Petra was the chief town, is well characterized by Diodorus,[Diod.

When the Macedonian Greeks first became acquainted with this part of Syria by means of the expedition which Antigonus sent against the Nabataei, under the command of his son Demetrius, we are informed by Diodorus that these Arabs placed their old men, women, and children upon a certain rock [Greek text], steep, unfortified by walls, admitting only of one access to the summit, and situated 300 stades beyond the lake Asphaltitis.

When the effects of commerce required a situation better suited than Kerek to the collected population and increased opulence of the Nabataei, the appellation of Petra was transferred to the new city at Wady Mousa, which place had before been known to the [p.x]Greeks by the name of Arce [Greek text], a corruption perhaps of the Hebrew Rekem.[Joseph.

Graec.] When the stream of commerce which had enriched the Nabataei had partly reverted to its old Egyptian channel, and had partly taken the new course, which created a Palmyra in the midst of a country still more destitute of the commonest gifts of nature, then Arabia Petraea,[A comparison of the architecture at Wady Mousa, and at Tedmour, strengthens the opinion, that Palmyra flourished at a period later than Petra.] Wady Mousa was gradually depopulated.

Its river, however, and the intricate recesses of its rocky valleys, still attract and give security to a tribe of Arabs; but the place being defensible only by considerable numbers, and being situated in a less fertile country than Kerek, was less adapted to be the chief town of the Nabataei, when they had returned to their natural state of divided wanderers or small agricultural communities.