This is one of the earliest ketubot known to us. The purpose of the ketubah (marriage contract) is to protect the wife by providing a guaranteed financial settlement (the ketubah payment) in the event that the marriage ends by the death of the husband or divorce. The ketubah contains the following elements- date and place of its writing, names of the groom and bride, the marriage proposal, the promise to give the bride her due, the mandatory ketubah clauses or “court stipulations,” the statement that the document will be replaced, and the statement by the groom that he accepts all the above provisions.

RECTO-

On the third of Adar in the consulship of … that you will be my wife according to the law of Moses and the Judeans, and I will feed you and clothe you, and I will bring you into my house by means of your ketubah. I owe you the sum of four hundred denarii, which equal one hundred tetradrachms, whichever you wish to take and to … from … together with the due amount of your food, and your clothes, and your bed, provision fitting for a free woman, the sum of four hundred denarii which equal one hundred tetradrachms, whichever you wish to take and to … from … together with the due amount of your food, and your bed, and your clothes, as a free woman.

And if you are taken captive, I will redeem you from my house and from my estate, and I will take you back as my wife, and I owe you your ketubah money. And if I go to my eternal home before you, male children which you will have by me will inherit your ketubah money beyond their share with their brothers; female children shall dwell and be provided for from my house and from my estate until the time when they will be married. And if I go to my eternal home before you, you will dwell in my house and be provided for from my house and from my estate until the time that my heirs wish to give you your ketubah money. And whenever you tell me, I will exchange this document as is proper.

And I, Yehudah son of El’azar Khthousion, accept all that is written above.

VERSO-

…for Babatha daughter of Shim’on due from Yehudah son of El’azar

signatures

[Yehudah son of El’azar for himse]lf wrote it

Baba[ta daughter of] Shim[‘on] for herself

fragment of name witness

Toma son of Shim’on wi[tn]ess

147. Trans. Y. Yadin, J. C. Greenfield, A. Yardeni, “Babatha’s Ketubba,” Israel Exploration Journal 44 (1994), pp. 79-84. This papyrus document was discovered in 1961 by the expedition led by Yigael Yadin to the Cave of the Letters in Nahal Hever in the Judean Desert.