The Religion of the Nabataeans: A Conspectus

John Healey's study is the standard critical survey of Nabataean religion, and its real evidentiary basis is stated in its own method: it works from the Nabataean Aramaic inscriptions, the surviving iconography and the archaeology directly, rather than relying on Greek literary report about the Nabataeans at second hand. That grounding in primary epigraphic and archaeological material, checkable against the inscriptions themselves, is why it functions as the standard reference despite the comparatively small and specialized field it covers. The corpus held no dedicated authority on Nabataean religion at any tier before this source was added. This record has not independently traced further scholarly disagreement with Healey's specific readings since 2001. Use it for established facts about Nabataean religion and its deities; a claim resting on a single inscription's own disputed reading needs the epigraphic literature addressed directly.