Near East Kingdoms

Al-Natah (Settlement) (Arabia)
c.2400 - 1300 BC

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The first historical mention of Arabs from the Near East's southern deserts occurred in 853 BC. Subsequent regional changes allowed Arab groups to migrate northwards to create two kingdoms - the first of their kind - in the form of Kedar and Nabataea, while the Arabs of the southern desert largely remained tribal for another half a millennium.

That southern desert was very poorly known by ancient sources, whether in terms of its formative role in Arabic cultural evolution or its earlier role as the point from which the first Semitic-speakers emerged. Semitic-speakers formed a sub-group of the Afro-Asiatic language family which includes Hebrew (Israelites), Aramaic (Aramaeans), Arabic (Arabs), and Amharic (Ethiopians).

In 2024, following four years of investigation and research, a team of archaeologists under Guillaume Charloux of France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) announced the discovery of the ancient fortified town of al-Natah, located in an oasis in western-central Saudi Arabia. The general area is still a settlement today, known as Khaybar, a verdant and fertile speck in Medinah province which is encircled by desert and which long obscured the remnants of the ancient town on its northern flank. Khaybar was attacked in AD 628 by the nascent Islamic empire when it was a Jewish settlement.

The fortified Bronze Age town covered about 2.6 hectares, being founded around 2400 BC and expanded or improved until about 2000 BC. It remained occupied until at least 1500 BC, and possibly 1300 BC, albeit with potential disruptions. It represents an intermediate stage between full nomadism and the complex urban settlements which are seen in other ancient Near Eastern regions. It generally existed within an environment which favoured pastoral nomadic groups.

Archaeologically rich regions such as the Levant and Mesopotamia make it easy to study the emergence of urbanisation in the Near East's Neolithic Farmer period. However, Arabia is severely lacking in well-preserved archaeological sites, making it harder to find similar evidence of this process. The discovery of the al-Natah settlement made it possible for the first time in north-western Arabia to reveal the characteristics of a third and second millennium BC settlement.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Times Atlas of World History (Maplewood, New Jersey, 1979), from Arabians in Mesopotamia during the late-Assyrian, Chaldean, Achaemenian and Hellenistic Periods, R Zadok (ZDMG 131, 1981), from The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia, Trevor Bryce, from Petra and the Lost Kingdom of the Nabataeans, Jane Taylor (2001), and from External Links: Lost 4,000-Year-Old Bronze Age Settlement (Arkeonews), and A Bronze Age town in the Khaybar walled oasis (Plos One).)

c.2400 BC

The Early Bronze Age in the Levant has already witnessed the formation of the melting-pot Canaanite people. Small settlements and towns have been (and are still being) built up into small walled cities, the first true city states in the region.

The al-Natah site during orthophotography to eliminate geometric distortions due to image perspective, with the site having been abandoned for at least three thousand, three hundred years (CC BY licence, by AFALULA-RCU-CNRS)

It has been about a millennium since Semitic-speakers first make their first appearance after migrating out of the Arabian Desert to enter Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Levant. In the latter they had begun a process of integration into the existing post-Pottery Neolithic population of various small cities of the time, most notably Jericho, where archaeology has backed up this arrival.

This process has more recently been inhibited to an extent by the earliest appearance of the Aramaeans in the north, an appearance which is bringing increasing disruption to the northern Levant. It is also disrupted - but perhaps not extensively so - by the arrival of the Akkadian empire in the twenty-fourth century BC.

Further disruption also begins as the climate starts gradually to become drier, which affects crop yields and food supplies. The process accelerates from about 2200 BC. This seems not to inhibit the similar growth of smaller walled settlements in western Arabia. The region is dotted with interconnected monumental walled oases which are centred around small fortified towns.

Sargon 'the Great', the warrior king of apparently humble origins, unified Sumer for (perhaps) the first time in recorded history through a series of campaigns and the defeat of the current holder of Sumer's equivalent of a high kingship

One of those towns is al-Natah, which appears around this time. It continues to expand and improve over the next three centuries. Its existence in an oasis in north-western Arabia is possibly due to to the trade in spices and other exotica from the south (now Yemen but in ancient times the kingdom of Saba).

The early period settlement controls two major communication routes, incorporating the wadi itself along an east-west axis, and a section of the road which leads to Tayma to the north and Medinah to the south. Site abandonment may take place around 2135 BC.

c.1964 - 1647 BC

A second 'middle' period of occupation begins around 1964 BC. This is marked by the construction and use of a rampart, with the dumping of domestic deposits and the use of circulation spaces in the residential area.

At the start of the second millennium BC, a series of small city states in Anatolia which had existed for perhaps a millennium now began to emerge from obscurity (click or tap on map to view full sized)

c.1488 - 1334 BC

A final 'late' period of occupation is identified within these approximate dates. This is marked only by the infilling, collapse, or re-use of the rampart. The settlement's end date is less precise due to a smaller number of archaeological finds and a higher error margin when dating them.

This could be evidence of a late redevelopment of the fortifications, in particular with the addition of a reinforcing wall. It also confuses the picture regarding whether al-Natah is a permanent site or one which really is marked by interruptions, as the current archaeology appears to suggest.

This period is still almost three centuries before the earliest-known appearance of Saba to the south, but the trade routes remain in operation during this time, primarily with Egypt providing the driving force.