508 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS
- And I took the sealed deed of purchase-the contract and the conditions-
also the open copy. We now know a good deal about how documents such as
the present one were drawn up, also how they were stored and kept for future
reference. The deed would have been written in duplicate on a single piece of
papyrus, with a couple of blank lines in the center separating the two texts. The
document on the top half would be the sealed copy and the duplicate below,
the open copy, kept accessible for reference when needed. The sealed copy
guaranteed that the text would not be tampered with and would remain as it
was when written up (Yadin l 962a: 236; Avigad l 986b: 124-27). Avigad says the
practice of writing two copies was ancient, known already in early Mesopota-
mia. The top copy would then be rolled up, holes made in the blank lines, and
tied tightly with string. Clay seals would secure the string. If the papyrus was
wide, a cut would be made in the blank lines of the center, but only up to the
middle, and then the divided portions would be folded over the undivided por-
tion, and the top deed would be sealed in the same manner as an unfolded
document. The bottom part of the deed would also be rolled up, perhaps tied
with string, but not sealed, so as to be accessible. Legal documents prepared in
this fashion have turned up among the fourth-and fifth-century papyri found
at Elephantine in Egypt (Rubensohn 1907: 5-9). In Greek papyri of the collec-
tion, open copies are exact duplicates of the sealed copies; they are not ab-
stracts (L. Fischer 1910: 141). The Aramaic papyri from Elephantine were not
written in duplicate (Rubensohn 1907: 8; Kraeling 195 3: 51 ), but they do con-
tain memoranda on the outside of the rolls identifying their contents, e.g.,
"document of a house," "document of sale," or "document of marriage" (Krael-
ing 1953: 50; ABD 2: 450). The same is trne for the most part of the Rar Kochba
(A.D. 132-35) contracts found in the so-called "Cave of the Letters" in Nahal
Seelim, west of the Dead Sea, near En-Gedi. Yadin (1962a: 236-37) says that
only occasionally did these documents give an abstract of the subject matter;
usually the wording of the exterior was identical with that in the interior. The
first-century B.C. Greek documents from Avroman in Kurdistan, written on
parchment, were also done in duplicate and rolled up like the Elephantine pa-
pyri, except that halves were not folded over (Minns 1915, with a drawing). On
the Elephantine legal papyri in Greek and Aramaic, their writing, tying, and
sealing, see L. Fischer 1910; Kraeling 1953: 49-51; Porten 1968: 191-99; 1979;
idem, "Elephantine Papyri" inABD 2: 445-55. For pictures of sealed papyrus
documents from Elephantine, see G. E. Wright 1957: 206; Porten 1979: 74;
ANEP^2 82 ##265, 279. On the Bar Kochba documents, see Yadin 1962a. For
the large corpus of West Semitic seals, including pictures, see Avigad 1997.
the contract and the conditions. Hebrew hammi$wa weha~uqqfm is a stereo-
typed phrase in Deuteronomy, where it is translated "the commandment (and)
the statutes" (Deut 5:31; 6:1), but just what it means here has been disputed
since antiquity. The LXX omits the phrase, and some therefore delete it as a
gloss (Giesebrecht; Cornill; Holladay; McKane; cf. NEB and REB, which
reverse G. R. Driver 1937-38: 120). But the omission can be attributed to hap-
lography (homoeoteleuton: m ... m). The reading of T ("according to the
