Babatha

Content type
Collection

Entrepreneurs: From Antiquity Through the Early Modern Period

Jewish women have been recorded in entrepreneurial roles as early as the fifth century BCE, and many women held vital roles in their communities’ economies. Around the world, Jewish women took part in moneylending, trading, and property ownership, both with their husbands and independently.

Babatha

Babatha, daughter of Shim’on, a Jewish landowner who lived in Roman Arabia, owned a document archive found in a cave in the Judaean desert. Babatha’s archive is an extremely important resource for many issues, especially on the question of Jewish women’s legal position in Greco-Roman Palestine during the second century CE.

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