โ Scribed by G. E. Wright
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contained in the text of the papyri which suggest a dating in the reign of Malichus II. 43 A word must also be said about the inscriptions which cover the rocky walls of the massif of Sinai or, more exactly, its southwest portion. Among some three thousand of these graffiti, only five are dated. The oldest is from A. D. 150, the latest, 253. The remainder present a type of script equally developed, and must date therefore from the second and third centuries. The graffiti brought to light on the other side of the Gulf of Suez, at Abu Daraj, are of the same period, and like the first, they must be attributed to Nabataean caravan drivers, in the service of Egyptian commercial agents", whose camels were put out to pasture here.
At Petra itself, the Roman occupation lead at first to renascence. Indeed, the great theater at the entrance to the city, and the multi-storied tomb facades are to be dated in the epoch of the Antonines. Though more modest, the tomb of Sextus Florentinus, governor of the province of Arabia, testifies no less to the importance which Petra still possessed. But in the third century, Petra was no longer one of the great cities of the Eastern world. At least a century earlier, Palmyra had replaced it as the great emporium of the desert. In the Byzantine period, Petra became an ecclesiastical center, but in the Middle Ages, it ceased to exist, and all memory of its glorious past was lost. It remained for the explorer, J. L. Burckhardt, who visited the site in 1812, to recognize in its maenificent ruins the vestiges of ancient Petra. 43. UIB 1954, pp. 153f. 44. P. Dusaud. La penetration des Arabes en SYrie avant FIslam, p. 62.
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