Incense Route – Desert Cities in the Negev
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How it came to be
The Incense Route – Desert Cities in the Negev comprises four Nabatean towns in southern Israel, Haluza, Mamshit, Avdat and Shivta, along with four fortresses and two caravanserais. From around the 3rd century BCE the trade carrying frankincense and myrrh from south Arabia to the Mediterranean was hugely profitable, and the Nabateans, whose capital was Petra, controlled its route.
Of an incense route network more than 2,000 km long, the inscribed section runs about 100 km from Moa on the Jordanian border to Haluza in the northwest. In a desert with about 100 mm of rain a year, the Nabateans collected floodwater with small dams, channels and cisterns to farm. Field walls still survive around Avdat.
The towns were largely deserted from the 7th century, which helped preserve them. They were inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2005, the same year inappropriate reconstructions at Mamshit were removed. The excavations at Haluza were backfilled in 2005 and 2006.
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