Babatha

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Babatha (* around 104; † 132) was a woman of Jewish faith who lived in the port city of Maoza at the southern end of the Dead Sea at the beginning of the 2nd century AD . The place is in Jordan today .

Discovery and Importance

The existence of Babatha was known from her personal documents, which the archaeologist Yigael Yadin found in a leather pouch while investigating the Cave of Letters . In the cave on the west bank of the Dead Sea near the oasis En Gedi , other finds from ancient times were made, such as documents by the Jewish rebel Bar Kochba . The Babatha documents are primarily contracts for marriage, property transfers and guardianship. These documents from the years AD 96-134 offer a vivid picture of the life of an upper- middle-class woman in the Roman province of Judea at the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries. They are of particular legal historical importance, as they offer insights into the effects of Roman law on the everyday business activities of people at the time.

Life dates

Document on the four orchards of Babatha
Location of the documents in the cave of letters

Babatha was born around 104, presumably the only child or eldest daughter, so that she could inherit her father's date plantation . In 124 she was already widowed and had a young son named Jesus. A year later she married again, a certain Judah. He was the owner of three date plantations in En Gedi and had a daughter from a marriage to another woman. Since polygamy was allowed under the law of the time, it is not clear whether Babatha lived with her husband and his other wife or whether Judah owned two households between which he wandered.

Babatha Archives

The documents about her second marriage provide insight into her status within that relationship. For example, the fact that her marriage contract stated that Judah's debts became part of her obligations indicates that she was financially equal to him. A legal document dating from A.D. 128 shows that Judah took out an interest-free loan from her, clear evidence of her control over her own property. Until his death in 130, she took his possessions in En Gedi as pledge for his debts, which she had covered as agreed in the marriage contract.

Another document concerns her son's guardianship . So she went to court in 125 AD against her son's caregivers, alleging that they had not paid out enough funds. The document includes a petition that full responsibility for her son and his property should pass to her.

death

The latest document in the leather pouch concerns a summons to En Gedi, where Judah's first wife, Miriam, had sued her over the property of their deceased joint husband. It is therefore assumed that Babatha was at En Gedi in 132, where she would have gotten into the middle of the Bar Kochba uprising . It is therefore likely that she fled the fighting area with Miriam and her family. From the fact that the documents were still in the pouch and bone fragments were found in their vicinity, historians concluded that Babatha probably perished while taking refuge in the cave.

literature

  • Richard A. Freund: Secrets of the Cave of Letters. Rediscovering a Dead Sea Mystery. Humanity Books, Amherst 2004, ISBN 1-59102-205-3 , pp. 199-207.
  • Martin David Goodman: Babatha. In: The Oxford Classical Dictionary . 4th ed. Oxford 2012, p. 218.
  • Tiziana J. Chiusi: Babatha vs. The Guardians of Her Son. A Struggle for Guardianship - Legal and Practical Aspects of P. Yadin 12-15, 27. In: Ranon Katzoff, David Schaps (Ed.): Law in the Documents of the Judean Desert. Brill, Leiden 2005, ISBN 90-04-11357-6 .
  • Tiziana J. Chiusi: On the interaction between Roman law and provincial rights using documents from the Babatha archive. In: Thomas Gergen (Hrsg.): Diversity and unity in legal history. Festival ceremony for Elmar Wadle on his 65th birthday. Heymanns, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-452-25711-8 .
  • Jacobine G. Oudshoorn: The Relationship between Roman and local law in the Babatha and Salome Komaise archives: General analysis and three case studies on law of succession, guardianship and marriage. Series: Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. Volume 69. Brill, Leiden 2007, ISBN 978-90-04-14974-8 .
  • Andrea Rottloff: Life pictures of Roman women. Von Zabern, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3-8053-3546-6 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Martin David Goodman: Babatha. In: The Oxford Classical Dictionary . 4th ed. Oxford 2012, p. 218.
  2. ^ Richard A. Freund: Secrets of the Cave of Letters. Rediscovering a Dead Sea Mystery. Humanity Books, 2004, pp. 199-207.
  3. ^ Richard A. Freund: Secrets of the Cave of Letters. Rediscovering a Dead Sea Mystery. Humanity Books, 2004, pp. 199-200.
  4. ^ Tiziana J. Chiusi: Babatha vs. The Guardians of Her Son: A Struggle for Guardianship - Legal and Practical Aspects of P. Yadin 12-15, 27. In: Ranon Katzoff; David Schaps (Ed.): Law in the Documents of the Judean Desert . Leiden: Brill, 2005, p. 201.
  5. ^ Richard A. Freund: Secrets of the Cave of Letters. Rediscovering a Dead Sea Mystery. Humanity Books, 2004, p. 201.
personal data
SURNAME Babatha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION jewish woman
DATE OF BIRTH at 104
PLACE OF BIRTH Maoza
DATE OF DEATH at 132
Place of death at En Gedi