al-'Aqaba (ancient Aila/Ayla) was likely founded as a Nabataean response to threats to the incense trade after the Roman annexation of Egypt in the late 1st century BCE. The city facilitated connections between the Arabia peninsula and the Mediterranean from the 1st through at least the 10th century CE. Ancient Aila was explored under the auspices of the Roman Aqaba Project , directed by S. Thomas Parker, during the 1990s and early 2000s. Excavators uncovered the northwestern portion of the port city on the eastern tip of the Red Sea (Jordan).
As a port city, Aila/Ayla was a busy center of commodity exchange, as evidenced by the discovery here of many different types of transport amphoras, including the Late Roman Amphora 1 (LRA 1). The city was also a center for the production of pottery. Aila/Ayla's ceramic industry begins with its founding in the early Roman era and extends well into the Islamic period. Over this long stretch of time, potters produced the full array of household pottery in several different wares (e.g., Aila Coarseware and Aila Cooking Ware). These have different distribution patterns, with some Roman-era wares attested across a wide geographic region in southern Jordan and the Negev of Israel, including distribution around the Dead Sea region (Dolinka 2003: 80-86).
In Byzantine-early Islamic times, Aila/Ayla potters produced wares for local household use, such as Aila Byzantine Painted Coarseware and Ayla ware basins, as well as amphoras for long distance trade. The distribution of Ayla Ware amphoras is very wide, as suggested by their alternate name, Ayla-Axum amphorae. They are found in southern Jordan, but are also common in the Red Sea region and have been found as far east as western India (Raith et al. 2013: 322, Fig. 1, 339, Table 1).
