Talk:Nabataean religion

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Religion

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dushara is a pretty obviously indo-european name for the sky-god

archaeological evidence upholds that the nabataeans themselves were arabs, but they did not enter the region until a few decades before the roman invasion and attempting to conflate the city of petra with the nabataeans would be an outright mistake. the nabataeans only conquered petra somebody after the year 200 bce, and only held it for a few decades, before the romans took over around 100 bce. the architecture in the region clearly indicates a period of greek control over the region, during the period of hellenic hegemony over the area.

if the only actual evidence of the pre-nabataean inhabitants is inscriptions referring to a sky god named dushara written in the persian period aramaic, that would make it overwhelmingly likely that the inhabitants were indo-aryan in origin. the root for the indo-european sky-god is dyeus, which has derivatives that include zeus (greek), dyaus (sanskrit) and dieu (french/latin).

this would make sense. the arabs are a people that originated in the south of the arabian peninsula, and only expanded northwards over time. there is no archaeological evidence of an arab presence in the north of arabia until well into the hellenistic era.

my understanding is that the governments in the region will not allow for carbon dating, for the reason that the idea of petra as a northern arab colony exists for the purpose of erecting an arabic/islamic ethnic-nationalist mythology over an area that they are in fact not indigenous to. the region would have likely initially been inhabited by semitic groups similar to jews and canaanites, before being placed under persian and greek hegemony and only briefly being controlled by these nabataeans, who were quickly driven back into the desert by the romans.

the religion of the people that wrote the inscriptions, who were not nabataeans, should be interpreted primarily through a persian filter. 107.179.229.36 (talk) 15:58, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]