Deities and dolphins : the story of the Nabataeans / by Nelson Glueck.

Copyright in 1965 by Nelson Glueck

Includes bibliographical reference (p. 559-570)

1. They began as Bedouins -- 2. Sanctuaries without number -- 3. The Story of a Temple -- 4. Architectural Orthodoxy -- 5. Dining with Divinity -- 6. By their Gods shall we know them -- 7. Sculptures Anonymous -- 8. Clearly different -- 9. First among Equals -- 10. Affinity with Dolphins -- 11. Atargatis Aphrodite -- 12. In the Center of the Firmament -- 13. The Astral basis of Nabataean Belief -- 14. Meaningful Names -- 15. Afterglow.

The title of explorer-archaeologist Nelson Glueck's latest book is not whimsical. It capsules accurately and in the fewest possible words the results of some of the author's archaeological discoveries in present-day Transjordan, once the land of the ancient Nabataeans, who flourished in the first centuries B.C. and A.D. The kingdom of the Nabataeans extended from Transjordan across the Negev to Sinai and from Arabia to Syria, controlling Damascus when Paul visited that city after emerging from the desert. Their capital was Petra, "the rose-red city, half as old as time." The deities and dolphins were discovered by Dr. Glueck when, as director of the American School of Oriental Research, Jerusalem, he excavated the Nabataean temple of Khirbet Tannur, the most complete temple of its kind to be opened up. Among the deities was a goddess wearing on her head a stone tiara of two dolphins facing each other in heraldic juxtaposition. In this book the author searches out and pieces together the evidence explaining why there are likenesses of dolphins in the desert-land of Arabia -- the old Roman Provincia Arabia. The importance of the dolphins lies in the clues they furnish for increased understanding of the Hellenistic-Semitic cultures of the Near East at the time of the Nabataeans (who spoke both an Aramaic dialect and Greek), and for revealing in a new light the commerce and other contacts between the Orient and the Occident. Employing his knowledge of Biblical history and modern archaeological techniques, Nelson Gluek uncovers the forgotten past and breathes new life into its buried stones and artifacts. We journey with him and with Paul and the Nabataean Syllaeus from Herod's Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast of Palestine to Puteoli near Naples, and consider with him the geopolitical factors pitting powerful kingdoms against one another for control of the heartland of the Near East. We see the relationships of the Judaeans, Syrians, Parthians, Egyptians and Romans with the Nabataeans, whose dolphins were symbols of safety, fortune and immortality from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean. The centrality of the zodiac and the planets in the religious orientation of the Nabataeans and their contemporaries is clarified. Deities and Dolphins is the story of a gifted and artistic people, the cultures they were molded by, the arts they developed, the fears and ambitions that motivated them, the likenessesd with and differences from their most immediate neighbors, the Judaeans, the tightrope they walked between Rome and Parthia.