Volume 4 of the Petra papyri represents the third volume published by a joint US–Finnish team in a projected 5-volume series.Footnote ¹ These documents hardly need an introduction. Found in a Byzantine church in 1993 at Petra, Jordan, the former capital of the Nabataean Arabs, the sixth-century Greek papyri quickly gained international attention. In the two decades since they were uncovered, the carbonised papyrus remains have been meticulously conserved by the Finnish team and the fragmentary rolls have been photographed using different techniques, including multi-spectral imaging. The result is an impressive corpus of material attesting a little-known period in the history of Petra. In fact, prior to the discovery of the papyri, which date from 537 (and perhaps even earlier) until the last decade of the sixth century, Petra was thought to have been destroyed by an earthquake that occurred in the mid-sixth century.

Thus far 49 discrete documents have been published. Nos 37–49 appear in vol. 4; they include tax receipts, deeds of sale, a marriage contract and a settlement of a dispute by arbitration. The dispute settlement (no. 39) dated to 8 August, 574 is of particular interest: it is one of the largest surviving Greek papyrus rolls written transversa charta, with a length of 620–50 cm and an estimated 523 total number of lines. Nine separate hands have been identified in the document. The settlement distinguishes itself from similar texts from Egypt by its extensive use of direct speech and by the non-formulaic nature of the language. The dispute involves Theodoros, son of Obodianos, a person who figures prominently in the Petra papyri, and Stephanos, son of Leontios. The two men owned adjacent properties, and at issue appears to be a longstanding disagreement over the exact boundaries of these properties. The papyrus includes numerous terms related to buildings and architectural space, some of which are difficult to understand in the context of the dispute, and J. Kaimio offers a good survey of the terms in the introduction (pp. 9ff). Also noteworthy is the fact that the papyrus mentions a phylarch named Abu Karib, who acted as arbitrator in a previous dispute between Theodoros and Stephanos' father Leontios. This person is most likely Abu Karib ibn Jabala, son of Jabala ibn Harith, the Ghassanid phylarch known also from historical sources. It is unclear if Abu Karib was still alive at the time the document was composed. If he was, then he may have been in his seventies by then. Given its remarkable size and other notable features, it is perhaps not surprising that no. 39 has earned a special place among the Petra papyri: already in 1995 it was dedicated to H.M. King Hussein bin Talal and H.M. Queen Noor al-Hussein, and in March 2012 it was entrusted to the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, so that it could be put on display in the new Jordan Museum.

The rest of the documents are of smaller size but contain various items of interest. Nos 37 and 38 were discovered tied together. The latter is too fragmentary to offer much information, while 37 is a receipt for taxes on part of a property that had changed hands without the new owners being immediately registered in the tax rolls. This situation is known from other Petra papyri: the registered owner would handle tax payments for the new owners, who for their part would pay the previous owner. Sometimes this went on many years after the sale of the property until the tax register was updated (in this document the previous owner has apparently been submitting payments on behalf of the new owner for 25 years). No. 40, less than half of which has survived, is identified by the editors as an example of a defensio, a document referred to several times in no. 39. In it, a seller defends his ownership of a piece of property and by doing so establishes his right to sell it. No. 41 is a highly fragmentary deed related to the sale of a house accompanied by supporting documentation concerning rightful ownership. Nos 42 and 43 concern the marriage of a certain Kyra and Thomas. The former papyrus is the marriage contract; it is poorly preserved, but must have been quite long originally. Of interest is its reference to the military status of embathmos, a term that may refer to a new recruit and is otherwise attested only at Nessana, also in Palestine. More of 43 survives: it is a contract related to the newlyweds' property and is one of the latest surviving Petra papyri, dated to 592 or 593. The remaining texts are for the most part quite scrappy. Nos 45–7 are tax receipts submitted by Theodoros, son of Obodianos, and 48–9 are fragments that also mention Theodoros but are related to the Petra church in which the papyri were found. They refer to ministers' wages, the lighting of candles, the ancient mining site of Phaeno, which was located 45 km north of Petra, and to a hitherto unattested place called al-Sarkia.

Because of the uneven distribution of papyri surviving in the ancient world it is natural to compare anything originating outside Egypt with documents from Egypt.Footnote ² M. Buchholz provides a nice introductory essay (pp. 1–8) that examines legal terminology in the extant Petra texts against the background of Greek documents from Egypt. He concludes that, while there is no sign of discrepancies in legal institutions in the two places, linguistic differences (both legal and non-legal) suggest that at Petra legal language adhered more closely to Roman law and Latin terminology. He even goes so far as to say that the place experienced ‘deeper “Romanization” compared to Egypt’ (p. 4). Whether this is true is perhaps debatable, but it can hardly be disputed that the Petra papyri offer us an important body of material that reflects customs, language and cultural influences not observed in texts from elsewhere.