Qataban in 218 B.C.

Qataban — Spring 218 BC · The Incense Kingdoms of Arabia Felix.

A South-Arabian incense kingdom of the Sabaean civilization, ruling the Wadi Bayhan and Wadi Harib on the desert edge of the Ramlat al-Sab’atayn (modern Yemen). The Qatabanians — who called themselves the "children of ‘Amm" after their national god — grew rich as masters of the frankincense and myrrh road, levying tolls at the walled market of their capital Timna and farming their wadis by dam and sluice. In 218 BC Qataban is a flourishing independent power, one of the four great nations the Greek geographers named at the southern edge of the world.

Far to the south of the wars of the Mediterranean kings, beyond the deserts of Arabia, lie the aromatic kingdoms the Greeks called blessed — Arabia Felix. Qataban is one of the greatest of them, seated at Timna in the Wadi Bayhan, where the caravan road to the north begins. Here the frankincense and myrrh of the south are gathered, taxed and forwarded; the kingdom’s wealth is the perfume that rises on a thousand altars from Egypt to Rome. In 218 Qataban stands among the powers of the incense lands, contending with Saba, Hadramawt and Ma’in for the road and its tolls, its market-law inscribed in stone for all the caravan peoples to obey.