An Additional Nine Idumean Ostraca

The Idumean ostraca in the Baidun collection belong to the huge corpus of almost two thousand Aramaic ostraca from Idumea, which have arrived on the antiquities market since the 1980s. Most are short records of the delivery of goods and workers. The corpus also contains large groups of land registers and lists of personal names, as well as jar inscriptions. The texts were written by scores of professional scribes as part of the late Persian and early Hellenistic accountancy. The six dated and dateable chits in this collection span a period of a dozen years, from 362 to 350 BCE; a seventh chit is from 336 BCE, 25 years later; two are undated. All chits begin with the name of a payer, but only five have payees. The payers in the chits are representative, with three from members of leading clans, Baalrim and Qosi, three from the prominent Saadel clan, three from individuals with dossiers of five and seven chits, respectively, and one fragmentary chit that is unique. The products are primarily agricultural. The other two chits in this dossier record the depository Makkedah and the enigmatic mi. In sum, if we had only Baidun's nine ostraca, we would have a representative sample of the Idumean corpus.