ocr: economic reasons. In the middle of the fifth century, Petra was a Christian city and the seat ofa bishop; in the sixth century it seems to have been a squalid Byzantine town, and early in the seventh it appears to have been virtually deserted. Itis nowhere mentioned in the annals of the Moslem invaders who passed along its caravan routes. After nearly 1,000 years, the Nabataeans disappeared from history as unheralded as they had come, giving way to yet another wave of Semitic nomads from the vast Arabian reservoir. Itv was their concern with the caravan trade of Arabia that must have led the 1 ...
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