Anglo Israel Archaeological Society lecture at 4pm on Wednesday 18th November: Dr Kimberley Czajkowski (University of Edinburgh) on ‘Re-approaching the Babatha Archive’.
The Cave of Letters in Israel’s Judean Desert has offered up a wealth of documentary evidence, including the rare archives of two families. These are commonly named after the Jewish women to whom most of the papyri belonged: Babatha and Salome Komaise. They lived in the village of Maoza on the southern coast of the Dead Sea in the Nabataean Kingdom and later Roman Arabia from 106 CE. Their administrative and legal papyri include deeds of sale and gift, marriage contracts, loans, census returns and disputes. These few papyri have attracted huge scholarly interest over the years. So why has the paperwork of these two women proved so important? And what is there still to learn from the Babatha archive? Kimberley Czajkowski is a Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Edinburgh. Her research mainly focuses on the legal history of the Roman Near East, with broader interests in the history of the Jewish people, Roman law and Romanization. She is the author of Localized Law: The Babatha and Salome Komaise Archives (2017) and co-editor of Law in the Roman Provinces (2020).
The talk is free to members and non-members. Please confim your attendance by email to: secretary@aias.org.uk. A Zoom link will be shared around 48 hours before the event.