The Nabataeans and the incense trade

The wealth and prosperity of the Nabataeans was rooted in their role in the trade of incense and aromatics. There is recorded use of incense by the Egyptians for religious purposes as far back as the third millennium BCE, likely sourced from modern-day Ethiopia and Somalia. By the first millennium BCE however, southern Arabia was immersed in the trade. The Greeks used incense in ritual, worship, and medicinally, and demand had accelerated rapidly.
Frankincense, grown in ancient Hadramawt in southern Arabia, could be harvested between April and July. Incisions cut into the branches allowed the resin to flow, hardening for collection and storage. It was shipped between September and November, to the port of Qana, from where it would be transported overland in the camel caravans that passed through the ancient kingdoms of Qataban, Saba (likely to be the Biblical Sheba from where the legendary Queen of Sheba ruled), and Ma’in and northwards towards AlUla. The trade in incense intensified even further in the face of Roman demand, on account of the prolific use of incense in Roman funerary practices.
The Nabataeans began to operate within the incense trade in about the fourth century BCE. Initially a nomadic population, the Nabataeans were skilled in surviving in the desert and exploiting water resources, enabling them to cope well with the long-distance overland trade routes. Precisely where they originated from or how they began to lead a more settled and less nomadic lifestyle is uncertain. However, they appear to have taken control of the area to the north of Dadan by the end of the first millennium BCE following the collapse of the city of Dadan, possibly due to a catastrophic earthquake. They named their settlement Hegra, and from the first century BCE onwards it became the predominant settlement in the area, a second capital to Petra for an increasingly wealthy and important Nabataean kingdom.