In this chapter I will look at those documents in the archives that have been qualified as marriage contracts: P.Yadin 10, P.Yadin 18 and P.Hever 65.[1009]

The documents present interesting material as they may all have been qualified as marriage contracts, but have been described as docu­ments with a completely different spirit:

Not one of the five marriage contracts written in Greek can be said to be a translation of an Aramaic ketubbah.

P.Yadin 10 can be considered as an early example of the later Jewish ketubba,^[1011] P.Yadin 18 seems to resemble a Greek marriage contract^[1012] and P.Hever 65 mentions continuation of life together and could therefore testify to a practice of ‘premarital cohabitation'^[1013] or agraphos gamos, unwritten marriage (i.e. marriage consists without any formal docu­ment drawn up at the start, while a later drawn up document concern­ing financial matters may turn agraphos gamos, unwritten marriage, into eggraphosgamos, written marriage).^[1014] The three documents together provide excellent material for a closer look at the way in which marriage related documents were drafted within one community at a particular moment, and to raise questions as to what this evidence means for our understanding of the legal environment.