The Nabataeans; also Nabateans (Arabic: ???????? al-?Anba?); were ancient peoples of Jordan; whose oasis settlements in the time of Josephus (AD 37 - c. 100); gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Syria and Arabia; from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. Their loosely-controlled trading network; which centered on strings of oases that they controlled; where agriculture was intensively practiced in limited areas; and on the routes that linked them; had no securely defined boundaries in the surrounding desert.

Trajan conquered the Nabataean kingdom; annexing it to the Roman Empire; where their individual culture; easily identified by their characteristic finely-potted painted ceramics; became dispersed in the general Greco-Roman culture and was eventually lost.