It's the ancient's on history hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's

podcast we are continuing the story of the rose city of ancient Petra. Now in

the last part of this podcast it was brilliant to see how well received it's

been. David Graff, this brilliant professor from the University of Miami and

Petra expert, talked through the early history of Petra and the rise of the

Nabataeans particularly focusing on the early Hellenistic period and today we're

going to be continuing the story. We're going to be talking about Petra during

the Roman period and how new archaeology from the site is transforming our

idea about the history of this ancient city. So without further ado here's David

to continue the story of Petra.

Now regarding Petra we talked about the early history and its emergence in the

early Hellenistic period as the Hellenistic period goes on does Petra become

this center for trade. The Nabataeans were engaged in trade in the fourth

century in their first reference that we have to them. In the second century AD

during the Roman period when the Nabataean kingdom was annexed and was no

longer in existence there's a reference in Apaleus in a book he called Florida

which I didn't write on us he gave the name to it but in that book he makes

reference to the Nabataeans as merchants. So already in that period in the second

century AD they are known as merchants and at a site called Darb al-Bakra in

Saudi Arabia that was just discovered not too long ago over 900 Nabataean

inscriptions were found on a trade route coming from Yemen to that area. They

mentioned guards and caravaniers and protectors and various people some

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