It is more than two million square kilometers of red dunes and deadly quicksand. Only a few coastal areas are spared from the Arabian desert and its extreme climate, one of the most inhospitable on the planet. Without permanent bodies of water, with sites that barely receive 50mm of rain throughout the year and with temperatures that range from very hot to freezing at night during some seasons.
Surviving in this environment is not easy. Humans have struggled to survive in this ecosystem since the Pleistocene, sharing the space with gazelles, oryxes, sand cats, or spiny-tailed lizards. These are the ones who have resisted. Others, such as the striped hyena, jackal, or honey badger, have become extinct due to hunting, habitat destruction, or overgrazing.
If it is already difficult to live day by day in such a hard place, trying to maintain something lasting becomes almost impossible. The Bedouin tribes (derived from the Arabic word badawi, ‘desert dweller’) have adapted by becoming nomads. Their houses are easy to carry from one place to another and their diet is based on the products they obtain from their own cattle or the fruits they obtain in the oases.
Under these conditions, the Romans must not have had an easy time establishing themselves in the Arabian desert almost 2,000 years ago. And, even so, they managed to build several forts, probably during the military campaign linked to the conquest of the Nabataean Kingdom in 106 AD, a civilization created around the world famous city of Petra (Jordan).
What is surprising is that these sites had disappeared leaving virtually no trace. But archaeologists from the University of Oxford have been able to find them using a tool as common today as Google Earth, as they explain in an article published in the journal Antiquity.
In total, three new fortified camps have been identified in North Arabia. Investigators believe that part of the hitherto unknown offensive could have been launched from there in southeast Jordan. “We are almost certain that they were built by the Roman army, because of their typical playing card shape, with opposite entrances on each side,” says Dr Michael Fradley, who led the research.
The only notable difference between them is that the westernmost camp is significantly larger than the two located to the east. According to Dr. Mike Bishop, an expert on the Roman army, fortresses (Castrum) “show how Rome maintained a province, but these temporary camps reveal how they acquired it in the first place.”
The forts would have been built by the army as temporary defense stations when they marched on campaign. “The level of preservation is truly remarkable, particularly as they may have only been used for a few days or weeks… They are situated along a peripheral caravan route linking Bayir and Dûmat al-Jandal, suggesting a strategy to avoid the route most used by the Wadi Sirhan, adding an element of surprise to the attackâ€, indicates Fradley.
“These camps, if we are correct in dating them to the early 2nd century, suggest that the Roman annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom after the death of the last king, Rabbel II Soler, in 106 was not an entirely simple matter, and that Rome moved quickly to secure the kingdom,” said Professor Andrew Wilson, co-author of the paper.
Since the distance between each camp is 37 to 44 kilometers, archaeologists speculate that it was too far for infantry to cross in a day, and if built by a cavalry unit, it could travel over such terrain. arid in a single day, possibly on camels.
Based on the distance between the camps, it is also suggested that there may have been another camp located further west, between the last fort and the Umayyad well at Bayir. The newly discovered camps run in a straight line towards Dûmat al-Jandal in what is now Saudi Arabia, but was then a settlement in the eastern Nabataean kingdom.
Its location suggests that Rome had to force its seizure of power, while extant Roman documentation argues that the transfer of power was a peaceful event at the end of the reign of the last Nabataean king.
