Note 148 — Chapter X · SYRIA AND THE LAND OF THE NABATAEANS.

The Nabataean inscription found recently near Dmêr, to the north-east of Damascus on the road to Palmyra (Sachau, Zeitschr. der deutschen morgenl. Gesellschaft, xxxviii. p. 535), dates from the month Ijjar of the year 410 according to the Roman (i.e. Seleucid) reckoning, and the 24th year of king Dabel, the last Nabataean one, and so from May 99 A.D., has shown that this district up to the annexation of this kingdom remained under the rule of the Nabataeans. We may add that the dominions here seem to have been, geographically, a tangled mosaic; thus the tetrarch of Galilee and the Nabataean king fought about the territory of Gamala on the lake of Gennesaret (Josephus, Arch. xviii. 51).