Aretas IV and the height of Petra

Aretas reigned for almost half a century. On his coins, from 1 BC, and in inscriptions he is called “king of the Nabataeans, lover of his people” (Nabataean Aramaic rḥm ʿmh) — hence the epithet Philopatris. The wealth of Nabataea came from the caravans that carried frankincense, myrrh and spices from southern Arabia through Petra to the port of Gaza. Petra, which survived in the desert thanks to the careful collection of rainwater, flourished in the 1st century AD, when its population is estimated to have peaked at about 20,000. Al-Khazneh, the most famous of the monuments carved into its rose-red sandstone, is thought to have been built at the beginning of the 1st century AD as a mausoleum — possibly that of Aretas himself.

Aretas also appears in the history of Judaea and of early Christianity. When Herod Antipas divorced Aretas’s daughter Phasaelis to marry Herodias, Aretas invaded his lands in 36/37 and defeated his army. The apostle Paul recalls escaping from Damascus, where “the ethnarch of King Aretas” was guarding the city, by being let down the wall in a basket (2 Corinthians 11:32–33). The kingdom kept its independence until Trajan annexed it in 106.