How Women Differed

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Babatha’s archive, described in the foregoing article by Anthony J. Saldarini, is not the only Jewish woman’s archive found in the Judean desert. Another, much smaller archive, belonging to Salome Komaise, was discovered in nearby Wadi Seelim (according to the Bedouin from whom it was purchased).¹ These two archives provide a glimpse into the special problems facing women in the second century C.E. and compare interestingly to three contemporaneous men’s archives excavated from the same area, some of them from the same cave.

The Salome Komaise archive consists of just six documents, as compared with the 35 documents in the Babatha archive. But both include three especially significant documents: a marriage contract, a deed of gift and a renunciation of claims.²

Marriage contracts were not simply ceremonial documents in ancient cultures, as they are today. Rather, these contracts arranged the financial obligations of a husband and wife. The contracts can be divided into two sorts: those based on a dowry, that is, the price the bride’s family pays the future husband; and those based on the bride price (in Hebrew, mohar), the price the future husband pays his bride’s family. The Jewish marriage contract combined elements of both, but it was primarily concerned with the bride price. Unlike traditional ancient marriage contracts, a Jewish contract allowed the husband to pay the bride price directly to his wife, rather than to her father. The Jewish marriage contract thus offered proof of a debt that a husband owed his wife and that she could one day collect. Indeed, these debts were collected: At least one copy of a canceled marriage contract indicates that the sum specified therein had been paid.³ In Babatha’s case, her husband died in 130 C.E., and although she escaped to the cave in 135 C.E., her marriage contract was still intact, suggesting that it had not been paid.

The deed of gift was a legal form used by many cultures to grant or will property. Among Jews, it was borrowed primarily to circumvent the Biblical law that kept a man’s daughter from inheriting some or all of his property. Biblical law originally excluded daughters from inheriting under any circumstances, but Moses emended that law (Numbers 27:8–11). He allowed the daughters of Zelophehad to inherit their father’s land because they had no brothers; otherwise the land would have been lost to their tribe (Numbers 27:1–7). Moses later added the condition that they not marry outside their tribe, for the same reason (Numbers 36:6–9). But even with this emendation, Biblical law kept daughters from inheriting anything if they had a brother.

With a deed of gift, however, a Jewish father could grant some of his property to his daughter. He could add a clause postponing the transfer of the gift until after his death. But the deed had to be given to the daughter while her father was still alive. Thus Babatha’s husband presented his daughter, Shelamzion, with a deed inscribed: “Judah son of Eleazar … to Shelamzion his daughter, all his possessions in En-Gedi … after his death.”⁴ Such deeds were often given to daughters at the time of their wedding, as evidenced by the Babatha archive. Women needed to carry these documents with them to prove ownership of property. A man, by contrast, owned property through his inheritance rights.

The document known as a renunciation of claims seems to have had a function similar to the deed of gift. This document was probably written by people who had once laid claim to a woman’s property but who had been persuaded, either by monetary or legal means, that they no longer had any right to that property. Thus for example, Shelamzion carried a document stating: “We [the male heirs of her father, his nephews] concede to you … a courtyard with all its rights in En-Gedi and the rooms with it … If anyone enters a counterclaim for the said courtyard, we will conduct a firm legal defense and will clear it for you of any counterclaimant at our own expense.”⁵

Marriage contracts, deeds of gift and renunciations of claims were typically feminine documents. Women kept these documents carefully, and as Komaise’s and Babatha’s archives prove, when they ran from the Roman legionnaires and hid in the Judean desert caves, they did not leave the documents behind.

The men who escaped with these women also carried their most precious documents with them. Three men’s archives have been discovered in Nahal Hever and Wadi Murabba‘at.⁶ The contents of these archives, however, differ significantly from the women’s archives. 039They are impersonal. One of the archives, found in the Cave of Letters, belonged to Jonathan bar Bain, the Jewish commander of En-Gedi and one of the generals serving under Bar Kosiba, who led the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (132–135 C.E.). It contains his military and administrative correspondence with Bar Kosiba and other military personnel but does not indicate whether he was married, had children or owned property in En-Gedi. We may guess something about his family because Babatha’s co-wife, Miriam, seems to have been his sister. (Her maiden name, Bain, appears in one of the Babatha archive documents.) Thus anything personal we know about him derives from the women’s archives.

The second man’s archive was found in a leather bag not far from the Babatha archive in the Cave of Letters. These documents belonged to Eleazar bar Shmuel, who was more business-minded. His archive consists of leasing contracts he signed with various farmers in En-Gedi. Again, the documents are impersonal. We do not know, for example, whether Eleazar was married or not.

The third men’s archive was discovered in a cave in Wadi Murabba‘at.⁷ The archive belonged to Jesus ben Galgula, Bar Kosiba’s military commander in Herodium. It also contained letters of a military nature. The only personal detail we know about him is that his sister was apparently hiding with him, as her marriage contract was also excavated from that cave. Once again, the only personal detail about a man is found in a woman’s document.

Men’s and women’s archives were different because their legal and social positions were different. A woman was defined by her relationship to a man (or men), and she carried her documentation as proof of that relationship. A man, on the other hand, belonged to no one and was not required to prove who he was. While men’s archives provide information regarding public life and political history, women’s archives provide rich data on private life and social history.

Before the discovery of these women’s archives in the Judean desert, the only similar documentation of Jewish social life in antiquity came from some fifth-century B.C.E. papyri from Elephantine, in Egypt.^a Among these documents are two women’s archives—one belonging to a woman called Mivtahya and the other to a former slave, Temat, and her daughter, Yehoyishma—which included a marriage contract, a deed of gift and several renunciations of claims.⁸ The similarities between the contents of the women’s archives from Elephantine and those of the Judean desert caves are striking. The paperwork these two groups of women needed differs little, although they were separated by 600 years and thousands of miles.

(This article has been adapted from a lecture given in Jerusalem in connection with the July 1997 International Congress, The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years After Their Discovery.)

Babatha’s archive, described in the foregoing article by Anthony J. Saldarini, is not the only Jewish woman’s archive found in the Judean desert. Another, much smaller archive, belonging to Salome Komaise, was discovered in nearby Wadi Seelim (according to the Bedouin from whom it was purchased).1 These two archives provide a glimpse into the special problems facing women in the second century C.E. and compare interestingly to three contemporaneous men’s archives excavated from the same area, some of them from the same cave. The Salome Komaise archive consists of just six documents, as compared with the 35 documents […]