Petra Papyri II

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The second volume in the Petra Papyri series, the scholarly publication meticulously documenting, translating and interpreting the information recovered from approximately 140 carbonized papyrus scrolls found during ACOR's excavation of the Petra Church. The scrolls had been carbonised in a fire and were thus preserved, although many scrolls were in a destroyed condition and could not be read. Such discoveries are exceedingly rare. The Petra papyri texts are dated c. 537 to 594 thanks to the law promulgated by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian to place the date at the beginning and end of a document. The scrolls vary in size from a single sheet such as P. Petra 6 (L. 28 cm), a list of stolen goods, to the exceptionally long P. Petra 2 (L. 8.5 m), which is an agreement concerned with inherited property. These documents deal with real estate transactions, disputes, contracts, divisions of property, marriages, dowries, and inheritance. The central figures of the archive are Theodoros, son of Obodianos, who was deacon and later archdeacon in the church, and his extended family and peers. The language indicates that the people in Petra at this time were speaking an early form of Arabic. A

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