As the Romans advanced their frontier, they were brought into contact with the kings of Nabat. Malchos II in the year b.c. 47, supported the Romans under Cæsar, and entered into an agreement with them. As a result, a Roman tax-collector resided at Leukokome, the southernmost point of Nabat. After the conquest of Egypt in b.c. 30, the Romans, their imagination fired by the thought of the untold wealth of Arabia, entered into an agreement with the Nabateans, and sent eighty boats, with ten thousand men, including five hundred Jews and a thousand Nabateans. These sailed from Arsinoë around Sinai in b.c. 25 to invade and conquer Arabia. It was in vain that Syllæus, the Roman tax-gatherer at Leukokome, urged that the Arabians were rich in merchandise only. The expedition landed, camels were chartered and the Romans entered the country. But here they found a land bare of food and water, and no one to contend with. The expedition was a miserable failure, but Syllæus who tried to prevent it, was accused of treachery and condemned to death.[127]
The Nabateans had originally been content with pastoral pursuits. For a time they became pirates and had little skiffs, with which they despoiled all other merchants who trafficked in their seas. Their obvious intention was to protect the trade along their overland route which assumed great proportions as we learn from the remarks of Strabo.
One reason of their success in this direction was their extensive use of the camel as a means of transport. There are many references in the Assyrian annals to the large number of camels which were bred in Arabia. Ashurbanipal (b.c. 668-626) says that after his conquest of Arabia, “camels like sheep I distributed and caused to overflow to the people of Assyria dwelling in my country. A camel for half a shekel, in half shekels of silver, they were valued for at the gate.”[128] The Nabateans employed camels in such numbers that Strabo spoke of their convoys of camels (καμηλέμποροι), which moved between Petra and Leukokome in the land of Nabat, with so many people and camels that they resembled armies. The camels moved to and fro at certain periods of the year, being timed by the arrival at Leukokome of the boats from the East. In between they were driven to pasture in the fruitful wadis which lay near the caravan routes. It was to the men herding these camels that the wadis of southern Sinai owed their inscriptions.
These inscriptions consist, for the most part, of a few words, including a name or a greeting, which are roughly incised on rock or boulder at about the height of a man above the valley floor. Some are accompanied by signs or by the rough drawing of animals or men, sometimes there are drawings and signs without writing. The animals are chiefly camels, gazelles or cattle. There are some horsemen and some nondescript animals. Among the signs that are used are the Egyptian ankh, the Greek alpha and omega, and the Christian cross, showing that a great variety of persons passed there. The words are written without regularity, the animals and men are drawn with poor skill. They are, for the most part, unattractive scrawls, the interest of which lies in the information which they indirectly convey.
The inscriptions in the wadis of southern Sinai were first noted by the lady Etheria who visited the peninsula about the year 450. A century later they attracted the attention of Cosmas, whose second name, Indicopleustes, marked the extent of his travels. Cosmas was in Sinai about the year 545, and in his Christian Topography wrote of the inscriptions, which he attributed to Israelite industry.
“And when they had received the Law from God in writing and had learnt letters for the first time, God made use of the desert as a quiet school and permitted them for forty years to carve out letters on stone. Wherefore, in that wilderness of Mount Sinai one can see, at all their halting places, all the stones that have been broken off from the mountains, inscribed with Hebrew letters, as I myself can testify, having travelled in those places. Certain Jews too, who had read these inscriptions, informed me of their purpose which was as follows: the departure of so and so of such and such a tribe, in such and such a year, in such and such a month,—just as with ourselves, there are travellers who scribble their names in the inns in which they lodge.—And the Israelites, who had newly acquired the art of writing, continually practised it, and filled a great multitude of stones with writing, so that all those places are full of Hebrew inscriptions, which, as I think, have been preserved to this day for the sake of unbelievers. Anyone who wishes, can go to these places, and see for himself, or at least can enquire of others, about the matter, when he will learn that it is the truth which we have spoken.—When the Hebrews therefore had been at the first instructed by God, and had received a knowledge of letters through those tables of stone, and had learned them for forty years in the wilderness, they communicated them to the Phœnicians at that time when first Cadmus was king of the Tyrians, from whom the Greeks received them, and then in turn the other nations of the world.”[129]
After the time of Cosmas we hear no more of the inscriptions, till the seventeenth century when they attracted the attention of Pietro della Valle about the year 1618.[130] In the eighteenth century copies were brought home of some of them which attracted further attention. In 1762 Niebuhr went to Sinai with the intention of visiting the Gebel Mukattab, or mountain of writing. He was taken, instead, by his sheykh to the inscribed ruins of Serabit. Some of the rough Sinaitic inscriptions appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature in 1832; others were incorporated by Lepsius in his work on Sinai. They were first claimed for the Nabateans by Lévy in 1860.[131] Prof. Palmer of the Ordnance Survey collected over 3000 between 1868-70, and endorsed the view that they were the work of traders and carriers. Prof. Euting recently published over 300 in facsimile and collected similar inscriptions along the wadis west of Petra between Damascus and Palmyra, and elsewhere.[132] It is said to be habitual in Arabia to scrawl tribal marks on walls and rocks in order to show the rights of the tribe, a name and a greeting being frequently added as a notice to kinsmen and friends passing that way. These casual marks and inscriptions have recently gained a new interest, for the light which they throw on the development of the Arabic script.
Most of the inscriptions along the wadis of Sinai are in Aramaic or other Semitic script, a few are in Greek, a few are in Kufic. The larger number are pagan, and their character is indicated by such as the following, “Remember Zailu, son of Wailu, son of Bitasu” (no. 11).[133] “Think of Sambu, son of Nasaigu” (Ibid., no. 120). Many names are those of the Bible, including Jacob (no. 510) and Moses (no. 337). How the sight of these names must have rejoiced the heart of Cosmas! Others include names that are current in Arabia at the present day.
In Greek script stand the words “Be mindful (μνησθῇ) of Chalios the son of Zaidu” (no. 253). One inscription consists of an Egyptian ankh with the alpha and omega on either side, and the Greek words Kyrie eleison, with the figure of an animal that may be intended for a camel (no. 380). Again, in Greek stand the words “An evil race! I, Lupus, a soldier, wrote this with my hand” (no. 613). Another inscription consists of a cross with the words “Amen, one God, our Saviour” (no. 581).