Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/252

* N ^~▼" riic foui'tcentli letter and eleventh I cniisDiiant of the Konian aliihabet. I This cliaiactcr has varied very little ^1 in form and not at all in value ^ since the orijiin of the alphabet. The orifiinal letter was apparently called nun, which in IMuenieian and in tlie North Semitic languages signified 'fish.' Apparently the early pietographio character represented a fish. See Alphabet. Phonetic C'har.^cter. y stands for the dental or alveolar nasal sound which is the equivalent to d and (. The sound is produced by a check or mute contact and sonant vibration of the vocal cords as in d with the addition of the opening of the nasal passage made by lower- ing the soft palate. The size and sha]ie of the resonance-chamber make the ditlerence between n and the other nasal letters. Under certain con- ditions n may have a syllabic or vocalic value, as in rotten, forgotten. In scientific linguistics this value is represented by n. It is sometimes silent after m or I in the same syllable as in damn, hymn, (iiiltimn, kiln. Hefore r/. k, ch it receives a semi-guttural or palatal coloring to harmonize with the consonant it precedes, as in long, think, pinch. Source. In its historic development » repre- sents an original n which has been preserved with great constancy through the Indo-Germanie period to the present time. Tlnis night, Gothic nahts, Skt. nakti.lMt. nox : or again Idg. *ncros, 'new^,' Skt. navas, Gk. vc6f, Lat. noros. Goth. niujis, Ger. ncu, Eng. iiric. In Anglo-Saxon an original Germanic n disappears before s. f. and I'. As A SvMHOL. As a numeral X = HO and ^ = 00,000. In chemistry X = nitrogen; Xa = sodium (i.e. natrum). NABA, niilia. A seaport of Japan. See Xafa. NABAB, na'bAb'. Le (Fr.. the Xabob). A story by Alpbonse Daudet (1S77). based on the career of a contemporary adventurer. Its char- acters are in large part actual persons thinly disgni'ied. NABAT.ffi'ANS (Gk. Xa/Saroioi. yahataioi, Ar. .V<i/»/^i(|. . .rab people or tribe settled in various parts of the country east and southeast of Palestine, who formed during the Graeco-Roman period a petty indepemlent kingdom. Their his- tory is known to us from classical authors, espe- cially Diodorus and .Tosephus, as well as from numerous coins, and from inscriptions, dating from the year B.C. 169 to a.d. 105, which have been collected bv De Vogiie ( 1808 ), Doughty (1884), Huber ■ (1884), and Euting (1885)". They are located at various places from the llau- ran in the Xorth to Madain Salah (Al-llijr in Xorthern Arabia ) in the South. The Arabic char- acter of the Xabat;eans is evinced by their proper names, though they used a Western Aramaic language and script, as the Xorthern Arabic had not yet been reduced to writing. It is uncertain whether they are to be connected with the Xabaioth, an Arabic tribe mentioned together with Kedar as a son of Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 13; xxviii. 9; xxxvi. 3; I. Chron. i. 29; Is. Ix. 7) and several times referred to as yahn iati in the Assyrian inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser. Sargon. and Assurbanipal. The X'abatasans are first met with about 312 B.C. at Petra as nomads, but so strongly intrenched here that both the generals sent against them by Antigonus, Athenaeus and Demetrius, were unable to dislodge them. The Xabataean kingdom arose in ancient Edom upon the ruins of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires. Its first prince was Aretas I., to whom the high priest Jason fled in B.C. 109. Its first king was probablv Erotimus (Taim-Allat. n.c. 110-100). Obedas'l. (B.C. 90) was able to hold his own against Alexander .Jann;pus, and Aretas III. (Philellenos) against Antiochus XII. of Ccele-Syria. The latter even conquered Damascus, but was driven out by the general of Pompey. Antony presented part of the land of the Xaba- tieans to Cleopatra. When Malchus I. (B.C. .i0 2S) refused to pay tribute, his land was overrun by Herod. War broke out between Herod and Aretas IV. (A.n. 9-40) . in which the Xabatipans were suc- cessful. When Paul was in Damascus, that city must have been once again in the power of the Xabata>ans (11. Cor. xi. 32). At the time of the Emperor Claudius. King Abias undertook an expedition against Adialiene, but he was beaten back. Damascus was lost to Xero in the reign of Malchus II. (48-71). The last King of the Xabata-ans was Rabel II. (71-100). In 106 Cornelius Palma. Governor of Syria, made the region from Petra in the South to Postra in the Xorth into a Roman province. In the fnirtli cen- tury two provinces were created: Arabia with Rostra as a centre, ami Paliestina Tertia with Petra as centre. The latest inscriptions in Xaba- tiean ehar.'ieters are those of .M-Xamarah (.328), Zebed (.t12). and Harran (.508): but the lan- guage is purely Arabic. Later Arabic writers use the word Xahata;an as the equivalent of Ara-