Localized Law: The Babatha and Salome Komaise Archives

In the early second century CE, two Jewish women, Babatha and Salome Komaise, lived in the village of Maoza on the southern coast of the Dead Sea. This was first part of the Nabataean Kingdom, but came under direct Roman rule in 106 CE as part of the province of Roman Arabia. The archives these two women left behind not only provide a tantalizing glimpse into their legal lives and those of their families, but also offer a vivid window onto the ways in which the inhabitants of this region in...