INTRODUCTION

Romanisation, although the word is now unfashionable, is the umbrella term for complex and centuries-long phenomena of cultural exchange that created a diverse but recognisably similar Mediterranean world by AD 250.

* I extend my thanks to Hannah Cotton and J E Lendon, who read this paper for me and gave me useful advice.

1 H M Cotton “�Diplomatics' or external aspects of the legal documents from the Judaean desert: prolegomena”, in C Hezser (ed), Rabbinic Law in its Roman and Near Eastern Context (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 97) (2003) 49, 50: “The diplomatics of ancient documents can often give us important clues about the legal system (or systems) in operation in the documents themselves.” what system of law the people who made the documents were most likely to be using: Jewish, Hellenistic Greek, or Roman.

The legal documents from the Judaean desert, some 158 or 161 by my count, are divided into some clear subsets (usually called “archives”).^[105] The most important is that associated with the fascinating, formidable, and faintly unappealing Babatha, a litigious Jewish lady of property from Mahoza, in Roman Arabia, caught up in the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Romans that began in AD 132 and lasted until AD 136.^[106] Yet hers were not the only documents found in the desert. Discovered have also been those of Babatha s near neighbour, Salome Komaise, and Babatha's step-daughter, Shelamzion, as well as many other documents, mostly again legal, that actually originated in Judaea (not Arabia) rather than merely ending up there.^[107] For when the revolt began to go bad, when the balance tipped in favour of the Romans, Jews from both Arabia and Judaea fled the appalling slaughter and destruction with which the Romans punished rebellion and sought safety in the desert. Some came to the desolate Nahal Hever, a wadi that meets the western shore of the Dead Sea about three miles south of Ein-Gedi. Here, and in the wadi Murab'bat a little to the south, they hid in caves, having carried some of their belongings (as well as their legal documents) with them. One of these caves was early on found to have a stash of letters from Bar Kokhba himself to some of his lieutenants, and as a consequence was named “The Cave of the Letters”. When controlled excavations were carried out in this cave in 1960 and 1961, Yigael Yadin, the expedition leader, discovered not only many of the legal documents (including Babatha's) to be discussed here, but also some impressive artefacts, and the skeletons of six children, eight women (aged between fifteen and thirty years old), and three men (aged between fifteen and forty).^[108] Their garments were apparently of high quality, and the legal documents paint a similar picture of solid prosperity.^[109] It cannot be known, of course, whether any one of the skeletons was Babatha herself or her neigh­bour Salome Komaise, but whatever happened, they never could come back to claim documents that were obviously important to them.^[110]

When the legal documents in this cave were found, many bundled together in a leather purse,^[111] it was rapidly determined that there were some clear connections to legal documents on papyrus that had been appearing since the early 1950s, sold piecemeal by Bedouin to the Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem.^[112] In other words, fragments from inside the cave matched some fragments that scholars had already been studying. Only those with the desig­nation of P Yadin were found under controlled circumstances in the “Cave of the Letters”, but some published under the designation P Hever must have come from there as well; those published as P Mur were found in the wadi Murab'bat; while for others it simply cannot be established beyond a doubt where in the Judaean desert they came from.^[113]

Apart from the intrinsic interest that the details of these documents have for ancient historians, classicists and legal scholars, the matter of provenance is important because both Babatha and Salome, and therefore also their documents, came from the village of Mahoza, which meant that after AD 106 they were living in the Roman province of Arabia, created from what had been the independent client-kingdom of Nabataea.¹¹ In contrast, Judaea, virtually within walking distance to the west of Mahoza, had been under some form of Roman dominion since around AD 6.¹² In one sense, these provin­cial boundaries seem to have mattered very little: Babatha's family owned property in Judaean Ein-Gedi, for example, and there was clearly frequent movement back and forth between Ein-Gedi and Arabian Mahoza, the last transit that of the flight to the cave in the Nahal Hever.¹³ But in another way it does make a difference, because the documentary practices followed or practised in Arabia and Judaea were very different, the two areas demon­strating a different response to Roman administrative practices and Roman examples.¹⁴ It is an interesting oddity that two areas that were so close, and between which the boundaries could be so porous, could have what appear to be markedly different responses - with, indeed, the area subjected to Roman influence longer responding less obviously than the area more recently made a Roman province, Arabia.

11 Date of the creation of the province of Arabia, see H M Cotton, “The languages of the legal and administrative documents from the Judaean desert” (1999) 125 ZPE 219, 225.

12 Mahoza is identified as likely to be in the Ghor al-Safi, south of the Dead Sea, by H M Cotton and J Greenfield, “Babatha's property and the law of succession in the Babatha archive” (1994) 104 ZPE 211, 213, but not an easy (albeit apparently short) walk to Judaea: Cotton (personal commu­nication). Water-travel between the two was, however, possible: H M Cotton, “Ein Gedi between the two revolts” (2001) 20 SCI 139, 154. Distances between the villages named in the papyri are calculated in H M Cotton, “A cancelled marriage contract from the Judaean desert (XHev/Se Gr 2)” (1994) 84 JRS 64, 65 note 12. H M Cotton, “Some aspects of the Roman administration of Judaea/Syria-Palaestina”, in W Eck (ed), Lokale Autonomie und römische Ordnungsmacht in den kaiserzeitlichen Provinzen von 1. bis 3.Jahrhundert (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kolloquien 42) (1999) 75, 76-79, 81 also argues that Judaea, with its own prefect, was annexed to the province of Syria in AD 6: so not an “independent procuratorial province” until some time between 44 and 67, and not a praetorian province until some time after AD 70.

13 Owning property, P Yadin 11, 19 and 20, with Cotton, “Cancelled marriage contract” (n 12) 85­86; H M Cotton, “The rabbis and the documents”, in M Goodman (ed), Jews in a Graeco-Roman World (1998) 167, 173; Cotton, “Impact of the documentary papyri” (n 4) 232; H M Cotton, “Die Papyrusdokumente aus der judäischen Wüste und ihr Beitrag zur Erforschung der jüdischen Geschichte des 1. und 2. Jh.s. n. Chr.” (1999) 115 ZDPV 228, 230-231 and 241; H M Cotton, “Marriage contracts from the Judaean desert” (2000) 6 Materia Giudaica 2, 2; Cotton, “Ein Gedi between the two revolts” (n 12) 149-150, and 152-154; Cotton, “Bar Kokhba revolt” (n 4) 149.

14 Here, cautiously contra H M Cotton, “Jewish jurisdiction under Roman rule: prolegomena”, in M Labahn and J Zangenberg (eds), Zwischen den Reichen: Neues Testament und Römische Herrschaft. Vorträge auf der ersten Konferenz der European Association for Biblical Studies (TANZ 36) (2002) 5, 13: “the patterns of the relationship between the Jews of Arabia and the Roman authorities documented in the papyri cannot be assumed to have been very different from those current in the province of Judaea/Syria Palaestina”. In Cotton, “Cancelled marriage contract” (n 12) 65 she had argued for “the essential unity of the Jewish society reflected in all of the papyri from the Judaean desert”.

B.