Arabia did not automatically grant a wife the right to in- ... In denying the claims of the wife to her ... kingdom reveal women selling property on their own. (P.Yadin ...
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE
DEAD SEA SCROLLS
Lawrence H. Schiffman James C. VanderKam EDITORS IN CHIEF
VOLUME 2
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
2000
WOODEN ARTIFACTS
ence of three deeds of gift in the two archives from the Judean Desert-all designed to advance the financial interests of daughters and wives (P. Yadin 7 and 19; XI:Iev/ Se gr 64 )-suggests that the law of succession in force at that time (at least among the Jews) in the province of Arabia did not automatically grant a wife the right to inherit from her husband or a daughter the right to inherit from her parents when in competition with sons of her father's brother. In denying the claims of the wife to her husband's property this law seems to have been not unlike the normative Jewish law of succession. It differs from such Jewish law in preferring the claims of the man's brother or his brother's children to those of the daughter; normative Jewish law prefers the claims of children, whatever their sex, to those of the man's brother or his brother's children (Nm. 27.8, M.B.B. 8.2). Like Jewish law, however, the legal system reflected in these documents recognized a legal instrument that mitigated the rigor of rules of succession that were so prejudicial to women: the deed of gift. Economic Activity. The name Salome written in Greek letters on four jars discovered on Masada (Mas 891-894) must refer to the owner of the jars and/or the products therein, thus attesting to the involvement of a Jewish woman of independent means in economic activity in the period before 73 or 74 CE. The women encountered in the documents, whether married or not, own real estatehouses and orchards. Documents written in the Nabatean kingdom reveal women selling property on their own (P.Yadin 2-3 from 99 CE, unpublished; and XI:Iev/Se nab. 2, c.lOO CE, unpublished). We find women selling property together with their husbands (XI:Iev/Se 50, Mur 26, and XI:Iev/Se 7), giving it in deeds of gift (XI:Iev/Se gr 64), and declaring it in the census (P.Yadin 16). Some of this property was received in deeds of gift from parents (XI:Iev/Se gr 64 and P.Yadin 19) and husbands (P.Yadin 7). Women lend money (P.Yadin 17) and initiate litigation concerning money and property before the Roman governor (P.Yadin 13-15, 23, 25, 26). Literacy and Illiteracy. In Babatha's case (P.Yadin 15, and possibly that of the mother in XI:Iev/Se gr 69) we are told explicitly that "she did not know her letters," and therefore someone wrote a subscription for her. Illiteracy may be assumed even in those cases where it is not set out as the reason for the employment of a subscriber: contract (Kefar Bario?) XI:Iev/Se 8a, renunciation of claims after a divorce XI:Iev/Se 13, deed of sale XI:Iev/Se 50+ Mur 26, marriage contract Mur 21, deed of sale Mur 29, and deed of gift XI:Iev/Se gr 64. BIBLIOGRAPHY Benoit, P., J. T. Milik, and Roland de Vaux, eds. Les Grottes de Murabba'at. Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, 2. Oxford, 1961. Cotton, Hannah M. "Deeds of Gift and the Law of Succession in Ar-
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chives from the Judean Desert." In Akten des 21. Internationalen Papyrologenkongress, 13-19 August 1995, pp. 179-188. Archiv fur Papyrusforschung Beiheft, 3. Teubner, 1997. Discussion of the law of succession in the documents from the Judean Desert. Cotton, Hannah M. "The Guardian ('m(tpo7toc) of a Woman in the Documents from the Judaean Desert." Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 118 (1997), 267-273. Cotton, Hannah M. "The Law of Succession in the Documents from the Judaean Desert Again." Scripta Classica Israelica 17 (1998), 115-123. Cotton, Hannah M. "The Rabbis and the Documents." In The Jews in the Graeco-Roman World, edited by M. Goodman, pp. 167-179. Oxford, 1998. Discussion of the relationship between the halakhah and the documents. Cotton, Hannah M. "Women and Law in the Documents from the Judaean Desert." In Le ROle et le Statut de Ia Femme en Egypte Hellenistique, Romaine et Byzantine, Proceedings of the International Colloquium Held in Brussels and Leuven, 27-29 September 1997, Studia Hellenistica, edited by H. Melaerts and L. Mooren (forthcoming). Cotton, Hannah M., and Joseph Geiger. Masada II: The Latin and Greek Documents. Masada: The Yigael Yadin Excavations: Final Reports. Jerusalem, 1989. Cotton, Hannah M., and J. C. Greenfield. "Babatha's Property and the Law of Succession in the Babatha Archive." Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 104 (1994), 211-224. A discussion of P. Yadin 2-3, 7, 16, 23-24. Cotton, Hannah M., and E. Qimron. "XI:Iev/Se ar 13 of 134 or 135: A wife's renunciation of claims." Journal ofJewish Studies 49 (1998), 108-118. Cotton, Hannah M., and A. Yardeni. Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek Texts from Nahal /fever and Other Sites with an Appendix Containing Alleged Qumran Texts (The Seiyal Collection val. 2). Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, 27. Oxford, 1997. Katzoff, R. "Polygamy in P. Yadin?" Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik !09 (1995), 128-132. An interpretation of P. Yadin 26. Lewis, Naphtali. The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters, vol. I, Greek Papyri. Judean Desert Studies, 2. Jerusalem, 1989. The Greek part of the Babatha Archive and Aramaic and Nabatean Signatures and Subscriptions, edited by Y. Yadin and J. C. Greenfield. Wasserstein, A. "A Marriage Contract from the Province of Arabia Nova: Notes on Papyrus Yadin 18." Jewish Quarterly Review 80 (1989), 93-130. An interpretation of a marriage contract between Jews written in Greek. Yadin, Yigael, J. C. Greenfield, and Ada Yardeni. "Babatha's Ketubba." Israel Exploration Journal 44 (1994), 75-101. Final publication of P. Yadin 10. Yadin, Yigael, J. C. Greenfield, and Ada Yardeni. "A Deed of Gift in Aramaic Found in Nabal I:Iever. Papyrus Yadin 7" (in Hebrew). Eretz-Israel 25 (1996), 383-403. Final publication of P. Yadin 7. Yaron, R. "The Mesadah Bill of Divorce." Studi in onore diE. Volterra 6 (1971), 433-455. Discussion of writ of divorce Mur 19 and its relationship to the rabbinic writ of divorce. HANNAH
M.
COTTON
WOODEN ARTIFACTS. Due to the dry climatic conditions of the Judean Desert region, large numbers of wooden objects, dating to the Hellenistic-Roman periods, were preserved and recovered during the course of excavations. The largest collections of artifacts were found in
