Avdat

1 · POSITION

Avdat, ancient Oboda, in the Negev highlands, was founded in the third century BC as a stop and camping ground for Nabataean caravans on the road from Petra to Gaza. It is named after the Nabataean king Obodas I, who was revered as a god. The register holds it as the plainest of the incense towns: a station first, a town afterwards. [1, 2]

2 · FROM CARAVAN STOP TO CITY

The site passed from Nabataean to Roman to Byzantine hands; the Romans built an army camp there in the late third or early fourth century, and people lived there into the early Islamic period. Its ruins keep a temple platform, a temple of Oboda, wine presses, a Nabataean inscription and the church of Saint Theodore with Greek-inscribed tombstones. [1, 2]

3 · ON THE WORLD HERITAGE LIST

Avdat was inscribed by UNESCO in June 2005 as part of the Incense Route – Desert Cities in the Negev, with Haluza, Mamshit and Shivta. [1]

4 · WHAT IT RECORDS

A caravan needed a place to stop, water and a god to thank. Avdat began as the first of these and accumulated the other two, which is the order in which the register reads the desert towns. [2]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ Its end is given as an earthquake in the early seventh century by one source and in the early eighth by another, with habitation recorded into the mid-seventh; both are printed. [1–2]