Nabataean Aramaic is the extinct Aramaic variety used in inscriptions by the Nabataean Arabs of the East Bank of the Jordan River, the Negev, and the Sinai Peninsula. Compared with other varieties of Aramaic, it is notable for the occurrence of a number of loanwords and grammatical borrowings from Arabic or other North Arabian languages.
Attested from the 2nd century BC onwards in several dozen longer dedicatory and funerary inscriptions and a few legal documents from the period of the Nabataean Kingdom, Nabataean Aramaic remained in use for several centuries after the kingdom's annexation by the Roman Empire in 106 AD. Over time, the distinctive Nabataean script was increasingly used to write texts in the Arabic language. As a result, its latest stage gave rise to the earliest form of the Arabic script, known as Nabataeo-Arabic.