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“Ancestral estates” in Aramaic contracts: the legal significance of the term mhḥsn1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

H. Z. Szubin  and
Bezalel Porten
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Extract

The two family archives from the Elephantine Jewish Community contain respectively four (C 5, 6, 8, 9) and six documents (K 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 12) dealing with a single house each. One of the questions which arises is the occurrence, once in each of the archives (C 8:2; K 12:5), of the designation mhḥsn, translated either as “holding property” or as “military colonist”. Is the term of general meaning and its occurrence in each of the passages coincidence or is it a technical term with legal significance?

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 114 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 3 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1982

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References

NOTES

2 Cowley, , Aramaic Papyri, 20.Google Scholar

3 Grelot, P., Documents araméens d'Égypte, Paris, 1972, 256.Google Scholar

4 It can be demonstrated on papyrological grounds that C 9 was cut from the same scroll as C 8, and was written after it; cf. “Aramaic papyri in the Egyptian Museum: missing endorsements” in David Noel Freedman Jubilee Volume (forthcoming).

5 Cf. our study cited above.

6 Grelot, P., Documents araméens, 179.Google Scholar

7 Cowley, A. E., Aramaic papyri, 24.Google Scholar

8 Cf. our article cited above.

9 The role of penalty clauses in the Aramaic contracts will be discussed in a future article.

10 For detailed discussion of the Talmudic phrases defining the institution of “ancestral estate”, cf. Szubin, H. Z., Testamentary Succession in Jewish Law (to be published).Google Scholar

11 For the legal significance of this phrase, cf. our article cited above.

12 For interpretation of this phrase, cf. Szubin, H. Z., Testamentary Succession.Google Scholar

13 For the commonly accepted meaning and the most recent treatment of the root ḥsn, cf. Grelot, P., “Essai de restauration du Papyrus A.P. 26”, Semitica, XX, 1970, 30f;Google Scholaridem, Documents araméens d'Égypte, 1972, 286. He does not recognize the legal implications of the term in any of its contexts.Google Scholar

14 For this text, cf. Porten, B., Archives from Elephantine, Berkeley, 1968, 317fGoogle Scholar; idem, “Aramaic papyri and parchments: a new look”, Biblical Archeologist, XLII, 1979, 102f.Google Scholar