Herakleopolite Papyri on Marriage

The Herakleopolite papyri are a collection of legal documents that survive from a community of Judeans living in Hellenistic Egypt in the second century BCE. Most of the documents are complaints about the violation of contracts addressed to a governing body called the archontes. In P. Polit. Iud. 3, the petitioner, Protomachos son of Demetrios, complains that his wife’s father or guardian has failed to give him a portion of a vineyard promised as part of or in connection with a dowry. The situation in P. Polit. Iud. 5 is more difficult to reconstruct because only the upper part of the document is preserved, but it relates to a share in a house given to the petitioner, Polyktor son of Polyktor, by his wife’s mother, possibly in connection with a large dowry of twelve talents that she gave the new couple.