Aramaic Adoption Contract
Description
Object Label: This document originates in the archive of Ananiah and Tamut, members of a Jewish family living on Elephantine Island in the fifth century B.C.. This contract allows a man named Uriah to adopt a boy named Jedaniah and thus free him from slavery. Adoption was one legal method used to free slaves in ancient Egypt. Catalogue description: Culture Aramaic Caption: Aramaic. Aramaic Adoption Contract, October 22, 416 B.C.E.. Papyrus, ink, 47.218.96a: Largest Fragment #1: 13/16 × 1 3/4 in. (2 × 4.5 cm) 47.218.96a: Largest Fragment #2: 1 × 1 3/16 in. (2.5 × 3 cm) a: Small Box of Fragments: 1 3/4 x 4 1/16 x 4 1/16 in. (4.5 x 10.3 x 10.3 cm) b: Glass: 15 1/2 x 17 1/16 in. (39.3 x 43.3 cm) b: Object: 11 5/8 x 13 3/4 in. (29.5 x 35 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Theodora Wilbour from the collection of her father, Charles Edwin Wilbour, 47.218.96a-b. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A fragmentary sheet of papyrus covered with dense ink text in horizontal lines, with many missing areas along the top and right edges.
The image shows a brown papyrus fragment with several torn or abraded sections, especially near the upper portion. Multiple rows of dark ink writing run left-to-right across the surviving lower and middle areas. The script appears non-hieroglyphic and non-Greek; however, the specific language/letter forms are not clear enough from the image to confidently identify as Aramaic. There are no clearly legible Egyptian hieroglyphs, and no visible cartouches or royal titulary are identifiable. No deities are explicitly named or depicted in the visible portion. No material besides papyrus and ink is clearly visible.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 47.218.96a-b tier-2
- BKM-Object 3489 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.