The nabataean game

This section of Nabataea. Over the last 20 years, new discoveries are pointing to the founding of Islam taking place in the ancient city of Petra.

Check the evidence for yourself and make your own decision. The Middle East lay in the grips of the Ottoman Empire for over a thousand years. As with previous empires, the Ottomans left their unique mark on Nabataea. Visit the railway stations from Damascus to Medina. See photos of the stations, bridges, round houses and maintenance yards. Click on a photo to see and learn more. The top of the page starts in Damascus Syria, and then follows the station stops down to the last station in Medina in Saudi Arabia.

Many of these photos have not been published anywhere else. They were gathered from the personal collection of men who worked on the railroad. The Qedarites are mentioned in Genesis as descendants of a son of Ishmael named Qedar. These tribes fled into the desert, and could not be conquered. The Assyrian kingdom eventually broke into two as two brothers began to rule, one the King of Babylonia and the other the King of Assyria.

In BC conflict broke out between these two brothers, and in support of the Babylonian king, the Qedarites invaded western Assyria, were defeated, and fled to Natnu the leader of the Nabayat for safety; as described in the records of Esarhaddan. Later the Qedarites and the Nabayat attacked the western borders of Assyria but were defeated.

Arab literature from the much later Islamic period mentions that there were at least two distinct groups of Nabataeans in the Middle East at that time. Second, there were the Nabat al-Sham or Nabataeans of Damascus. As you will discover later, the Nabataeans controlled Damascus during the time of the Apostle Paul, and perhaps these Nabataeans were descendants of the Nabataeans from Damascus.

Were these really two separate groups? The Zenon papyri from BC, mention that the Nabatu were trading Gerrhean and Minaean frankincense, and transporting them to Gaza and Syria at that time. Early Nabataean pottery has also been found in locations on the Persian Gulf, along the coasts of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

These Nabatu were pirates who sailed the Red Sea plundering trading vessels. Later they established bases in a number of seaports, including the port city of Aila modern day Aqaba , which is only km from present day Petra. While most of us think of the Nabataeans as people who transported goods in the desert by camel caravan, it has become increasingly obvious to me, that the Nabataeans preferred sea trade, and that they built and maintained a large and impressive merchant marine.

But, more on that later, right now we are trying to figure out who these people originally were. Despite all of these occurrences in history, it is still unclear where the Nabataeans came from. Language specialists tell us that Nabataean names were Arab names, their language was old Arabic, and that they seem to be found from the borders of Iraq to the depths of the Arabian desert.

However, it appears that different groups of Nabatu wrote their names in slightly different ways, so that some archeologists today are reluctant to say that they are all the same tribe, or that any one group is the original Nabataeans. We will examine these phenomena in a later chapter that looks at the Nabataean language. However, we do know that in BC, as the Edomites began a gradual migration north, the tribes of Arabia also began to move northward.

From their port city of Aila, Aqaba it was only a short move inland for the Nabatu to occupy the gradually emptying land of the Edomites, eventually making it the heart of the Nabataean Empire.

Although the chronology is not yet clear, it appears that some Edomites remained behind. However, in the Edomite territory, Nabataean culture quickly replaced the Edomite culture, and the Nabataeans became predominant.

When did the Nabataeans actually arrive? This is hard to answer. It seems that the Nabatu had a practice of setting up their tents a few kilometers from major cities. For instance, they did this at Selah, just outside of the Edomite capital of Busheira. They also did this at Jenysos just a few kilometers south of the ancient port city of Gaza. Even after the Nabataeans replaced and absorbed the Edomites, ties between the Idumaeans and the Nabataeans continued, as is illustrated by the family of Herod the Great, whose father was an Idumaean and his mother a Nabataean.

Building an Empire During the years that followed Alexander the Great, and that led up to the forming of the Roman Empire, the Nabataeans managed to become one of the most successful commercial societies in the Middle East. They used their knowledge of sea routes and caravan routes so that they were able to form a solid link between eastern goods and western markets. In an amazing way, they managed to take their caravans through the desert, unaffected by the local tribes who controlled wells and grazing land.

How did they do this, and leave no record of their alliances and agreements with these tribes? Perhaps there never were alliances and agreements. I believe that the mysterious Nabataeans developed a method of transporting goods in the desert, without needing to use the local water wells.

Since the local tribes, who were sometimes hostile, controlled these water wells, the Nabataeans developed water collection systems that provided them with water in the desert, at places unknown to others. Using their wide spread presence and their system of caravan routes and watering stops, the Nabataeans built an impressive trade empire in the heart of Arabia. For centuries, the Nabataeans never constructed a single house, or a single temple.

When they chose the site of Petra to build their magnificent city, it was a barren canyon, and possibly a place were they buried their dead. It seems that the Edomites never occupied this site. The Edomite capital was Busheira, located south of present day Tafila. Some Nabataean had originally settled near the Edomite capital city, occupying a flat-toped mountain that was known as Selah. Since this was probably the location of previous massacres, II Kings the Edomites would have avoided the place, leaving the Nabataeans alone to their own devices.

The Nabataeans initially made a small tent settlement atop this mountain to serve as a refuge and a safe place to store their women, children, and goods when they were away buying and selling. This mountain-top refuge, known as Selah, would play an important role in the years that followed. The Nabataean kingdom was quite large.

In the north, it controlled Bosra in Syria, and even, though briefly, Damascus. The capital of the Nabataean kingdom was Petra , but there were many other towns: in the west, Rhinocolura Al-Arish and Gaza, in the heartland Bozra and Madaba, while the towns of the Decapolis were at least temporarily or partly under Nabataean control.

According to Strabo, the Nabataean kingdom was well-ruled, and inscriptions like these ones tell us about officials with ranks like "governor" and "commander", and prove that laws were well-codified.

Dams to control the wadis and trade stations - the Incense Route led through Nabataea - show that the government was capable of organizing great projects. In some aspects, Nabataean civilization was different from, yes even opposed to Greek and Roman culture. For example, king Aretas IV had as surname "the one who loves his people" - not Philokaisaros or Philoromaios. The Nabataeans designed their own building order and stubbornly stuck to their own alphabet on which later Arab scripts are based.

On the other hand, Graeco-Roman civilization was hard to evade, and the same king Aretas IV was also responsible for building a theater in Petra. In CE, Nabataea was made a province of the Roman empire by the emperor Trajan , who wanted a better protection of the road from Damascus to Alexandria. The Nabataean troops seem to have offered little resistance, as could be expected, because the kingdom had suffered heavily from the decline of the Incence Route: since Rome had conquered Egypt, trade was increasingly often conducted by sailors, and Nabataean income had diminished.

The Roman period was an age of renewed prosperity. The new masters, who had their seat in Bosra, improved the main north-south road, the ancient Royal Road, which was apparently renamed Via Nova. In the cities of the Decapolis, now part of Nabataea, there were many new buildings. In Egypt, 5x5 game boards were common, while 7 x 7 or 9 x 9 board do exist. The larger boards are more complex, and created a greater challenge for the players.

Does the presence of 7 x 7 boards indicate a Nabataean preference for challenges? The game of Seega requires only one mover per location, so the holes do not have to be large. For an overview of the rules, and links to sites on the Internet about Seega, click here. Rocks and potsherds work nicely. If the board is increased to 7 x 7 or 9 x 9, each the players would have twenty-four or forty pieces. So, it is very possible that the square boards are Seega Board.

While this explains the 5, 7, and 9 place square game boards, it still does not explain the others, especially the 4 x 12 or 14 boards. It was hollow to allow a place for storing the pieces. It is made of fine inlays of shell, bone, lapis lazuli, and red limestone. The board dates from about BC, and was one of five such boards albeit the most richly decorated one found by the famous archaeologist in various tombs of the royal cemetery of Ur. It appears to have been very popular among the Sumerian rulers and to have spread from Sumer to sites all over the ancient world from India to the Mediterranean.

The game is played with fourteen markers seven to a side with two sets, one for each player, of three curious pyramidal dice. The boards the markers move on are variously made but all share distinct rosette markings on strategic squares. Senet was an immensely popular game in ancient Egypt, and was played by both commoners and nobility.

In later times it even seems to have taken on religious significance. The game required strategy as well as chance. The game box is made of ebony and ivory, and the playing pieces are made of faience, a composite material of ground quartz with a colored, alkaline glaze. For the rules for Senet and links to Internet sites about the game click here. The 4 x 12 game boards in Petra could easily be some sort of Senet boards.

The players basically rolled a dice, or cast sticks see rules , and moved their pieces onto the board, and tried to race them to the end. If they landed on another player's piece, they could 'bump' him off of the board. The players generally moved in an S shaped direction. Examples of 3 x 12 Senet boards were also common in Egypt. However, in our search for game boards in Petra, we did not turn up any traditional Senet game boards. If the 4 x 12 or 4 x 10 game boards that we did locate were Senet games, then they would have had to be played as illustrated on the left.

While this is an acceptable solution, it does seems to be just prolonging an already simple game. Yes, at least one of these boards was found in Petra by Dr.

Bilal Khrisat. Left: A 4 x 23 game board. Illustrating one found in Petra. An ancient 20 squares board, and assorted casting sticks, dating from the 18th dynasty of Egypt. The playing pieces are blue faience. In any case, Squares became a distinctively Egyptian game and extremely popular in ancient Egypt from the period of around B. The game requires some strategy, and a lot of chance. One of these Senet boards is shown circled , just as it was found.

On the other side of this board hidden from our view in this picture is, you guessed it, a Squares board. Unfortunately, there are no game boards in Petra that resemble the 20 squares board. While this is interesting to know about, we have not be able to link the 20 squares game to anything found within Nabataea.

Quirkat is a game of strategy that pits 2 armies of 12 men each, on a 5 X 5grid. It is first mentioned in written history somewhere in the 20 volumes of the Kitab al-Aghani book of songs which is poetic anthology on medieval Islamic society written by Abu al-Faraj Ali of Esfahan around AD. Sometime later, around , possibly in the South of France, somebody decided to play Quirkat on a chess board instead of the standard board. The game was played with 12 pieces on each side and was called Fierges or Ferses at first although this changed to Dames later.

The game did not force a player to take enemy pieces when the opportunity presented itself. The compulsory rule forcing a player to take whenever possible was introduced in France around , the resulting new game being called Jeu Force. The first book written on the game was published in Valencia, Spain in and now resides in the Royal Library of Madrid. Jeu Force is the game played in England today under the name of Draughts and the game was taken to America and called Checkers.

The first book in English about it was written in by Wiliam Payne, a mathematician from London. The rest of Europe took to playing a different development of Le Jeu Plaisant De Dames which appeared in Paris in and which is now the internationally recognized game of Polish or Continental Draughts. This game is superior in complexity to English draughts or checkers by virtue of the fact that it is played on a board ten squares by ten squares.

When researching this, we began to wonder if the 7 x 7 boards in Petra were Seega boards or large Quirkat boards. Since the Europeans expanded the board to 10 x 10, could the Nabataeans not have played the same game on a 7 x 7 board? In that case, a 7 x 7 board could be used for both Quirkat or Seega. Bilal Khrisat mentioned that he had found Labyrinth symbols in Petra.