Walking Through Jordan - Essays in Honor of Burton MacDonald - Michael Neeley
Pliny, Petra and the Aromatics Trade
Walking Through Jordan - Essays in Honor of Burton MacDonald - Michael Neeley
Andrew Smith [+]
George Washington University
Description
This paper provides a survey of the overland trade in frankincense and myrrh that passed through Nabataean and Roman Arabia, with special attention given to the various trade routes that converged on Petra from the south and those west of Petra that crossed the Wadi Araba. This includes the renowned Incense Route that linked Petra with Gaza as the Roman author Pliny describes. The opportunity will be taken here to summarize what we know about the regional trade patterns associated with Petra as well as to present new evidence derived from recent archaeological fieldwork in the central Wadi Araba. The focus will be on assessing Pliny’s account of the Incense Route with the available geographical, historical, and archaeological evidence.