Murabbaʿat 20

Murabbaʿat 20 (abbreviated: Mur20) is the name of an ancient papyrus from the Wadi Murabbaʿat . It is a Jewish marriage contract ( Ketubba ) written in Aramaic .

The papyrus was discovered in 1951/1952 in Wadi Murabbaʿat (Hebrew Nahal Deragot) on the northwest bank of the Dead Sea , then Jordan . It is one of 174 ancient documents that were found there in five caves, partly by Bedouins, partly in official excavations.

A 4 × 15.5 cm part of the papyrus has survived. On the front ( recto ) it contains the first third (fewer in the lower part) of 17 lines. Originally the document should have been more than ten lines longer.

The papyrus is a Jewish marriage contract (ketubba), in which the wedding sum (the property to which the bride is entitled in the event of a divorce), the rights of the woman in the event of the death of the husband and the rights of children, especially unmarried daughters , be determined. This information is only preserved in fragments in the document; some of them can be reconstructed on the basis of similar documents.

The document is a double certificate , that is, “that the same text was written twice one below the other on the same papyrus, in such a way that an empty space about 2-3 cm wide was left between the two texts; the upper text was then rolled up, tied with papyrus threads [...] and sealed, while the lower text was only folded up so that it could be read easily. "

On the reverse ( verso ) of such documents are the signatures of the bride and groom, the witnesses and possibly the scribe, usually written vertically on the lower part. It is only the beginning of one of the signatures received, a "Judah, son of Jh [...]"

Part of the date has been preserved in the first line: “7. Adar , year eleven ”. The indication of the era after which the year is counted has not been preserved. It could have been the post-Roman emperor era or the post-Arab province. In the latter case, the date would be February 117 AD.

Line 16 (the second line of the text below) indicates the place where the document was issued: Ḥar (o) dona (possibly Chirbet Ḥareẓān , 6 km southeast of Jerusalem).

literature

Józef T. Milik: 20. Contrat de Mariage, en araméen. In: Pierre Benoit, Józef T. Milik, Roland de Vaux: Les Grottes de Murabbaʿât (= Discoveries in the Judaean Desert . Volume II). Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961, pp. 109-114 (edition and French translation).
Elisabeth Koffmahn: The double documents from the Judah desert. Law and Practice of the Jewish Papyri of the 1st and 2nd Century AD (= Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. Volume 5). Brill, Leiden 1968, pp. 114–119 (commentary and German translation).
Ada Yardeni: Textbook of Aramaic, Hebrew and Nabataean Documentary Texts from the Judaean Desert and Related Material. A: The Documents. Hebrew University, Ben-Zion Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, Jerusalem 2000, pp. 119–120 (re-edition and (modern) Hebrew translation).
Ada Yardeni: Textbook of Aramaic, Hebrew and Nabataean Documentary Texts from the Judaean Desert and Related Material. B: Translation, Palaeography, Concordance. Hebrew University, Ben-Zion Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, Jerusalem 2000, p. 54 (English translation).

Individual evidence

↑ Elizabeth Koffmahn: The double certificates from the wilderness of Judah. Law and Practice of the Jewish Papyri of the 1st and 2nd Century AD (= Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. Volume 5). Brill, Leiden 1968, pp. 10-11.
↑ Józef T. Milik: 20. Contrat de Mariage, en araméen. In: Pierre Benoit, Józef T. Milik, Roland de Vaux: Les Grottes de Murabbaʿât (= Discoveries in the Judaean Desert . Volume II). Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961, pp. 109-114, here p. 111.
↑ Józef T. Milik: 20. Contrat de Mariage, en araméen. In: Pierre Benoit, Józef T. Milik, Roland de Vaux: Les Grottes de Murabbaʿât (= Discoveries in the Judaean Desert . Volume II). Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961, pp. 109-114, here pp. 111-112.

[1] Elizabeth Koffmahn: The double certificates from the wilderness of Judah. Law and Practice of the Jewish Papyri of the 1st and 2nd Century AD (= Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. Volume 5). Brill, Leiden 1968, pp. 10-11.

[2] Józef T. Milik: 20. Contrat de Mariage, en araméen. In: Pierre Benoit, Józef T. Milik, Roland de Vaux: Les Grottes de Murabbaʿât (= Discoveries in the Judaean Desert . Volume II). Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961, pp. 109-114, here p. 111.

[3] Józef T. Milik: 20. Contrat de Mariage, en araméen. In: Pierre Benoit, Józef T. Milik, Roland de Vaux: Les Grottes de Murabbaʿât (= Discoveries in the Judaean Desert . Volume II). Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961, pp. 109-114, here pp. 111-112.