This PhD-project pursues the study of comparative family law in the Eastern Roman Mediterranean paying special emphasis on the Jewish and Greco-Roman family in Egypt. We propose to study family strategies evolving around marriage, children, adoption, spiritual parenthood and other protective religious practices, succession and inheritance placing a special emphasis on the study of the respective law codes and legal writings and paying particular attention to the role of religion in these various societies of the Eastern Mediterranean.

We will focus on the Hellenic residents of Graeco-Roman Egypt, on the one hand, and on the Jewish society of this period both in Egypt and Palestine, on the other. The Hellenic sources are mainly the Greek papyri from Egypt (including also a small amount of Latin papyri). The Jewish sources are varied: the rabbinical Texts (Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash etc.), which are literary and juristic in form, but include much evidence regarding the legal practice among the Jews of this period. An important source for the legal practice of the Jews at this time is the cache of the private archives which was found in the Judean Desert and which enables us to compare the literary sources with original documents; this is not a common state of affairs when dealing with the rabbinical law system. Concerning the Jews in Egypt (mainly in Alexandria), here too we have documentary as well as literary sources: Greek papyri for the later Hellenic Jews, on the one hand, and literary works like those of Philo of Alexandria, on the other.

In addition to these two groups, we will try to widen the scope by examining other neighbouring cultures and law systems which were prevalent, before, during or after the period discussed in this work: Mesopotamian, Canaanite (Ugaritic), Demotic, Syriac sources (mainly the The Syro-Roman Lawbook), and the Roman legal system. This will allow us to view the details in a wider context and thus facilitate a better understanding of the complex matrix of interaction among the many cultures of the ancient Near East.