Who were the Nabataeans?

They were a group of Arabian tribes who settled in Northern Arabia and the southern parts of the Levant during the fifth-fourth centuries BC. Archaeological evidence shows that around 580 BC the Nabataeans started to move into the kingdom of Edom and integrated into this settled group.

The first reference to the Nabataeans goes back to 312 BC during the campaign unsuccessfully waged by Antigonus I against the nomads living in the ancient Edom lands. the historian Diodorus Siculus (50 BC) told of the events using the report by hieronymous of Cardia, a Seleucid official who fought in the war.

So, in his Bibliotheca historicais the first known description of the nabataeans: “nomads who neither sow nor reap, nor do they build houses, living from the trade of goods from Arabia. their rocky, arid land is impenetrable by enemies and only they understand” it.

During the period between the second century B.C. and the first century A.D. they established a kingdom that covered modern Jordan, northern Arabia, southern Syria and southern Palestine.

The control of trade routes was the main source of wealth for the Nabataean kingdom between the second century BCE and the end of the first century CE.

Petra, the Nabataeans' capital, was an active commercial metropolis receiving goods from various producers such as Arabia, India, East Africa and China. These commodities were then to be distributed to other nations.

Their kingdom came to an end in A.D. 106 when it was annexed to the Roman Empire by Trajan. By that time  the Nabataeans were a cultural entity possessing their own Aramaic dialect and associated script, distinct religious pantheon, characteristic art style, architectural forms and a territory centred at Petra and Medai’n Salih.
Who were the Nabataeans?

Etruscan civilization

The Etruscans were an indigenous people of pre-Roman Italy. They lived in central Italy, in the area bordered by the Tyrrhenian Sea and the courses of the Arno and Tiber Rivers, for a long time before they became liberate, for the mutual linguistic influence between Etruscan and neighboring Indo-European languages points to a length period of proximity.

The Early Iron Age civilization of the villages from which the later Etruscan communities developed in an unbroken sequence is known as the Villanovan, a name derived from that of a site east of Bologna. Written Etruscan is attested from the beginning of the seventh century BC by ca. 13000 inscriptions, mostly of the fifth-second centuries BC and concentrated in Etruria proper, between the Tiber and the Arno.

The Etruscan emerged in sometimes before 800 BC and who developed an advanced civilization that reach its height in the seventh and sixth century.

By the 700 BC they controlled a domain extending south to Campania, on the Bay of Naples. When the first Greek traders began arriving at the Campanian coast after 775 BC, it was probably the Etruscans, as overloads of the region, who invited the newcomers to make a permanent colony at Cumae.

Etruscan tomb painting

They were a great trading people and competed with the Greeks and Carthaginians for the wealthy trade of the western Mediterranean. The Etruscans also were master builder and they were skilled at reading omens; subsequent Roman society was to take many of these Etruscan developed and make them their own.

The Etruscan received important influences from the Greeks as soon as large scale trade with them began. They adopted the Greek alphabet in about 700 BC; writing seems to have been used as a sign of elite status.

After 450 BC the Greek and Etruscan trading networks were increasing stress from the growing power of expansionist Rome until, by the end of the fifth century BC, they had been completely disrupted by continual warfare in the western Mediterranean.
Etruscan civilization

Kingdom of Bosporus

The Kingdom of Bosporus, otherwise known as the Bosporan kingdom, was situated on the northern Black Sea littoral in the area known in ancient times as the Cimmerian Bosporus.

It was first settled by Milesians (6th century) at Panticapaeum, which later became the capital. Gradually the kingdom grew to include all of the Crimea. Other cities of the kingdom include, in the west, Theodosia, Nymphaeum, Myrmecium, Tiritace, Porthmium, Iluratum, Cimmericum, Cytae; in the east, Hermonassa, Gorgippia, Cepi, Patraeus, Tyrambe, Toricus.

A union of city-sates known the Kingdom of Bosporus was divided into two parts, European and Asian, by the Kerch Strait, which connects the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea.

The generally accepted date for the establishment of the Greek Bosporan kingdom is c. 480 BC, the event interpreted as Greek cities coming together under Panticapaeum to withstand Scythian pressure.

The kingdom maintained close ties with Athens on the 5th - 3rd century BC, reaching the peak of its peak in the 4th century BC.

During its peak, they were crucial suppliers of grain and other consumer goods for many cities of Greece and Asia Minor.

They maintained a close contact with local tribes, had economic and cultural impact on them, helped erode the patrimonial system, development of ownership-related differentiation, and establishment of class relations.

After the death of the last Spartocid (190 BC), the Bosporan kingdom became part of the Pontic Empire of Mithradates VI Eupator. With Roman expansion into the Black Sea, the kingdom fell into the Roman in 63 BC orbit ruled by Roman client kings.
Kingdom of Bosporus

The origin of Bithynia Kingdom

Bordering the Sea of Marmara, the straits of the Bosporus and the southern shores of the Black Sea and situated opposite Constantinople (Istanbul), Bithynia is today part of Turkey.

Bithynia was anciently inhabited by various nations, differing in their manners, customs, and language, namely the Bebryces, the Caucones, the Dolliones, the Cimmerii, and the Mariandyni occupied the northeast part.

Bithynia was named after the Bithynia one of the warlike Indo-European tribes that had emigrated from Thrace during the first quarter of the first millennium.

Bithynia came under Lydian rule in the seventh century. The province was conquered by the Persians in 546 BC and was included in the satrapy of Phrygia. Bithynia was conquered by the Greeks and the Romans and appeared to have attracted so much attention of its roads and strategic position between the frontiers of the Danube in the north and the Euphrates in the southeast.

The land was occupied by Alexander the Great in 334 BC. In 297 BC Zipoetes, a local Thracian chieftain, freed his country fro Lysimachus and assumed the royal title.
 
Nicomedes I (son of Zipoetes) established the first Dynasty of Bithynian kings and rules from 278 to 250 BC. In 264 BC he founded Nicomedia and made it capital.

Bithynia became a separate province in the 4th century AD, and continued to exist into the 8th century when Slav captives were settled there.
The origin of Bithynia Kingdom 

Carthaginian Empire

Carthage is situated on the coast of North Africa. The earliest settlement was established in around 800 BC. In the Aeneid Virgil immortalized the foundation myth of Queen Dido fleeing the Phoenician city of Tyre and the murderous designs of her brother to the shores of North Africa where she established her ‘New City’ in 814 BC.

According to the Roman historian Livy, the city was large, with protective walls that stretched for nearly 33 km.

The Carthaginians were a seafaring people and they had a large army. Soon the Carthaginian seafarers of Carthage began to colonize Andalusia, Malta, Sardinia and parts of Sicily.  Carthage also exerted control aver Malta and other islands in the sea lanes.

One group among the leaders of Carthage favored branching out into the interior where they occupied land in the Bagradas valley, and successfully practiced agriculture among the Berbers.

The high point of the Carthaginian hegemony may have occurred around 400 BC.

Carthage founded settlement which Greeks called emporia, along the entire coast from the Gulf of Sidra in present-day Libya, through present-day Tunisia and Algeria to the Atlantic coast of Morocco as well as on all the islands of the western Mediterranean, including the Balearics.

The Carthaginian trade continued to flourish, not only by sea but also across the Sahara Desert.

With Rome’s expansion, a series of wars against Carthage ensued in the third and second centuries over control of Mediterranean commerce and sea lanes.

For centuries Cartage had stood as the great rival to Rome. But after the conquest of the city in 146 BC by the Roman military leader Scipio Aemilianus, its walls were destroyed and only a ruin identified its location.

In that year the city was besieged, taken, plundered, its inhabitant exiled or enslaved, its wall demolished, its houses and public buildings burned to the ground.
Carthaginian Empire

Persian Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD)

Parthia was originally designated as a territory southeast of the Caspian Sea. It was a satrapy of the Persian Empire from 550 BC when it was subdued by Cyrus the Great until the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great in 330 BC.

The Parni, an Aryan tribe with roots in Central Asia, had come to the region of Parthia, east of Media and Persis along the Caspian Sea around 300 BC.

By 247 BC Parni named Arsaces ruled part of the satrapy, and he took control within a decade. This marked the start of the Parthian Empire. The Parthians took their name from the former Achaemenid province of Parthava, which correspond roughly with modern northeastern Iran.

Over the next several decades, Arsaces and the rulers after him took more of Seleucid lands, building a new Persian Empire.

During the reign of Mithridates II and Arodes II, the Parthians conquered all of Iraq, Armenia, eastern Turkey, and eastern Syria.

The Parthian Empire was in the height of its prosperity, one of the most powerful of all the Eastern monarchies. The ancient geographers mention a great numbers of cities in this empire. Ptolemy reckons twenty five.

The Parthian Empire was the enemy of Rome. The Roman Empires fought several fierce battles against the Parthians, from the 1st century BC into the 3rd century AD. These wars were broken by short periods of peace, and the then fighting would begin again.

In 224, during the reign of the Roman Empire Marcus Aurelius Alexander Severus, the Parthian dynasty was displaced by the Sasanid Persian dynasty, founded by Ardashir Shah Papakan.
Persian Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD)