The Petra papyri, also known as the Petra archive, is a corpus of

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a ...

documents written in

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

and dating to the 6th century AD that were discovered in the Byzantine Church at

Petra Petra ( ar, ٱلْبَتْرَاء, Al-Batrāʾ; grc, Πέτρα, "Rock", Nabataean Aramaic, Nabataean: ), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu or Raqēmō, is an historic and archaeological city in southern Jordan. It is adjacent to t ...

in 1993. At some 140 papyrus rolls, the collection constitutes the largest corpus of ancient documents ever found in Jordan and stand as one of the most important papyrological finds outside of the massive yields taken from the sands of

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

. Like the

Herculaneum papyri The Herculaneum papyri are more than 1,800 papyri found in the Herculaneum Villa of the Papyri, in the 18th century, carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The papyri, containing a number of Greek philosophical texts, come fro ...

, another major non-Egyptian find, the Petra rolls were preserved by virtue of their being carbonized in a fire, but most of the papyri were damaged beyond decipherment and only a few dozen preserve substantial, interpretable texts. The corpus is an "archive" in that it contains the private papers of a single family. The man at the center of this seemingly well-to-do household was one Theodoros who served as

deacon A deacon is a member of the diaconate, an office in Christian churches that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions. Major Christian churches, such as the Catholic Churc ...

at the Petra church, but his relation to many of the other people named in the papyri is often unclear. The family is most likely made up of wealthy landowners of both residential and agricultural lands, despite the slow decline in Petra's economy at the time. One, Gessius, was a famous physician in Egypt.Robert C. Caldwell and Traianos Gagos, "Beyond the Rock: Petra in the Sixth Century CE in the Light of the Papyri", Thomas Evan Levy, P. M. Michele Daviau and Randall W. Younker (eds.), ''Crossing Jordan: North American Contributions to the Archaeology of Jordan'' (Equinox, 2007), pp. 417–434. The documents in the archive of his family concern private matters like marriages, inheritances and sales, as well as public legal matters, including property disputes and the evolution of systems of tax records through successive political regimes (Byzantine, Roman, and Arab). Theodoros likely owned land spanning

Wadi Araba The Arabah, Araba or Aravah ( he, הָעֲרָבָה, ''hāʿĂrāḇā''; ar, وادي عربة, ''Wādī ʿAraba''; lit. "desolate and dry area") is a loosely defined geographic area south of the Dead Sea basin, which forms part of the borde ...

and Gaza, where he lived for a brief time. In addition to providing a rare glimpse into the affairs of an otherwise anonymous family over several generations, the Petra papyri offer evidence of the relations of a large group of the region's upper class, with approximately 350 individuals from outside the family being named in their personal and legal documents. The papyri present evidence of the honoring of the wealthy by the Byzantine regime, and the use of specific honorific titles to demarcate them. This kind of honoring occurred well into the Romanization of the city of Petra and the transfer of political power. The papyri are published in an eponymous series, ''The Petra Papyri'' (abbreviated P.Petra), which are prepared by teams of scholars from the universities of

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

and

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

and published by the

American Center of Oriental Research The American Center of Research (ACOR) is a private, not-for-profit scholarly and educational organization. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, with a facility in Amman, Jordan, ACOR promotes knowledge of Jordan and the interconnected region, past and ...

. Volumes I, III and IV, comprising some forty-nine documents, have been published to date. P.Petra II was published last in 2013. Some suggest that though the papyri was written in Greek, often there was content that was written in Greek letters, but phonetically representing content in a pre-Islamic dialect of Arabic.

References

Works cited

* . * . * * . * {{Citation, last=Gonis, first=N., title=Papyri from Petra, journal=Classical Review, volume=55, year=2005, issue=2, pages=655–7, jstor=3873919, doi=10.1093/clrevj/bni357. Papyrus Papyrology Petra 6th-century manuscripts