Obodas I

Obodas I (Nabataean Aramaic: 𐢗𐢃𐢅𐢞‎, romanized: ʿŌbōdaṯ; Ancient Greek: Ὀβόδας) was king of the Nabataeans from 96 to 85 BC. Obodas was deified after his death, and a holy site was dedicated to him in Petra where he is mentioned in a still extant inscription.^[1][2]

Silver drachm of Obodas I (86 BC)

His name transcribed in Nabataean Aramaic was also found in an inscription carved into a rock overlooking the Ein Avdat gorge, just over four kilometers from the site of the ruins of one of the Nabataean cities he ruled over in Palestine's Negev.^[3] It is composed of four letters 'a-b-d-t (Square Aramaic script:אבדת or Arabic script:عبدة), and is transliterated as 'Abdeh, the original Arabic name for the town of Avdat.^[3] Al-Mallah transcribes his name in Arabic as عُبادة‎, ʿubādah,^[4] which means "submission, obedience or worship (of god)".

Life

Obodas I was the successor of Aretas II, and one of his sons, from whom he inherited the war with the Hasmonean kingdom.^[2] He defeated them around 93 BCE on the Golan Heights.

Then he ambushed Alexander Jannaeus near Gadara (Umm Qais), just east of the Sea of Galilee. Using camel cavalry, he forced Jannaeus into a valley where he completed the ambush, thereby getting revenge for the Nabateans' loss of Gaza.^{[citation needed]} Moab and Gilead, two mountains east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan River, were returned.

Around 86 BCE, the Seleucid ruler, Antiochus XII Dionysus, invaded Nabatea. During the Battle of Cana, Antiochus was slain and his demoralized army perished in the desert.^[5][6] The Nabataeans, seeing how Obodas defeated both the Hasmoneans and the Greeks, started to venerate Obodas as a god.^[7]

Obodas was buried in the Negev, at a place that was renamed in his honour, Avdat. He was succeeded by his brother Aretas III.

Inscriptions

Nabataeans wrote using a variation of the Aramaic script that they developed into Nabataean Aramaic, however, their spoken language - or at least one of the prominent ones used between them - was Arabic.^[8]

Ein Avdat ('Abdeh)

The six-line inscription carrying the king's name was carved into a rock overlooking the gorge of Ein Avdat several kilometers to the north of where the ruins of the city of Abdeh lie.^[3] The script used is Nabataean Aramaic, and the first half of the inscription is in that language, while the last three are written in a colloquial form of the Arabic.^[3] There is some damage to the inscription that obscures half of the second line. The first three lines are translated by Moshe Sharon as follows:

"May he who reads be remembered in good memory before Obodas the god
And may he who wrote (also) be remembered ...
Garmalāhi son of Taymalāhi a statue before Obodas the god"

The next three lines in Arabic use a more poetic language and have challenged scholars seeking to translate them, particularly since the Nabataean alphabet could not represent all the sounds that exist in Arabic, and the similarity between the "d" and "r" letters in Nabataean script complicates decipherment.^[8] One of the first translations and most cited is:

"And he acts neither for benefit nor for favor. And if death claims us
Let me not be claimed. And if affliction seeks, let it not seek us
Garmalāhi wrote with his hand"

The inscription is dated to no later than 150 CE, making it the oldest inscription in Arabic (using a non-Arabic alphabet) documented to date.^[3]

Petra

An inscription at Petra dedicated to the deity Dushara mentions Obodas and calls him "king of the Nabataeans" and "king of the Arabs", the same titles carried by his father Aretas II.^[2]

See also

• List of Nabataean kings