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Out of the Desert
Petra Papyrus Khalid & Suha Shoman
In December 1993, a group of 140 carbonized papyrus
scrolls was found at Petra in excavations conducted
by the American Center of Oriental Research under the
general direction of Pierre M. Bikai. The texts are
written in Byzantine Greek. They belonged to Theodorus,
son of Obodianos, who was a church official in Petra.
The documents seem to be the private papers of his extended
family of wealthy landowners. They were written during
the course of the 6th century A.D and stored in a room
adjacent to the Petra Church. When the church burned,
the scrolls were carbonized and thus, preserved. This
document (Inv. 10), written between A.D. 527 and 537,
was originally some 3 meters long. It records the division
of an inheritance, probably from their father, among
three brothers, Bassus, Epiphanios, and Sabinus, who
may have been cousins of Theodoros.
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Located in Petra itself as well as the village
of Serila and an area called Ogbana, both of which
must have been very close to Petra, the property
includes fields for grain, vineyards, buildings,
agricultural facilities, and slaves. The agricultural
land, about 34 hectares, was for grain and grapes.
In addition, the brothers divided more than 20
housing complexes, including apartments with courtyards,
towers and other structures that numbered twelve
in Petra and nine or ten in Serila. Some of the
apartments in the city as well as in the village
came with small orchards (dry-gardens or xerokepia
in Greek). The term xerokepion suggests that this
piece of land did not need any form of irrigation.
This term used in the papyrus corresponds to the
Arabic gannath, a word that usually refers to
an orchard or garden dominated by shade-providing
trees. Additionally, two of the brothers received
a couple of slaves each.
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Before
the division, a large part of this land was leased out
to vintners, farmers, and planters of new vineyards.
This suggests that landowners in the area of Petra derived
their income from agriculture, especially from wine,
grain, and the fruits of their "dry-gardens."
It appears that long-distance trade, so important to
earlier Nabataeans, did not play a major role in the
economy of Petra at the time these documents were written.
This
scroll and the rest of the Petra papyri contain unique
evidence for the history and development of the Arabic
language. Many of the personal names in the archive,
although sounding Greek or Latin, may in fact render
Semitic or more specifically Arabic equivalents. Inv.
10 records many place names and names of houses that
may recall personal names in previous generations. For
example, a man's name is supplied by the toponym Mal
Amar al-Sarwa, the first part of which (mal) means "livestock,"
"money," "property," etc., in Arabic.
Amar is probably the common Semitic name Amr or Amir.
The following al-Sarwa is not so obvious, but it might
be a nickname meaning "the manly one" or "the
generous one." Names of women also appear in the
toponyms. A place named Math Osaina and another called
Math Lela are mentioned several times. The first term
in both toponyms may be an Old Semitic word meaning
"land" or "estate." Osaina can be
regarded as the female personal name Husaina, "the
beautiful one" and Lela must be the common Arabic
female name Laila.
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