sentences:  During the Roman period, a road was built to link the area with the Nabataean city of Petra (in modern-day Jordan).An Islamic copper smelting and trading community of 250–400 residents flourished during the Umayyad Period (700–900 CE); its remains were found and excavated in 1989, at the northern edge of modern Eilat, between what is now the industrial zone and nearby Kibbutz Eilot.The area was designated as part of the Jewish state in the 1947 UN Partition Plan.