The Saber and Scroll
Figure 3 . A scroll found in the cave ; part of the Babatha archive . Second century CE . Licensing : this work is in the public domain in its country of origin .
As the Roman soldiers marched along the western shore of the Dead Sea toward the Jewish stronghold stationed in En-Gedi , many of the inhabitants fled to the Judaean desert and hid in the desert caves . Along with valuable and necessary daily items , some of the inhabitants also brought with them numerous important legal documents that affirmed legal rights to their possessions . They hoped to remain in the caves only until the end of the rebellion and then return home to pick up the pieces of their lives . But that was not to be . Presumably , the Romans discovered their hiding place and forced them to either surrender to provincial authorities , or to stay there and die of starvation . Many surrendered and were sold into slavery ; some were transported to Egypt . 5 Simon Bar-Kokhba eventually died in a massive battle in the year 135 CE .
Nearly two thousand years later , in the 1960s , in a cave at Nahal Hever , archaeologist Yigael Yadin discovered the bones of many bodies belonging to men , women , and children , along with copious amounts of papyri stowed away in a crevice of the cave . This study examines the significance of an archive of legal documents found in the cave that belonged to a woman named Babatha .
While papyrological evidence supports the fact that she had been in the cave , there is no record of whether she surrendered to the Romans or whether some of the bones found in the cave belonged to her . Nevertheless , Babatha ’ s archive provides a rich array of evidence regarding the life of Jewish women under Roman rule in second-century Arabia Petraea . More significantly , this study reveals that Jews living in this Roman occupied region were not as romanized as some historians claim .
The documents of the desert caves demonstrate that legal practitioners and scribes drafted most legal papers in Greek , which was the official language of Roman legal administration in the provinces . Although the Romans had introduced their legal system in the
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