By Tom Baxter A few years ago, Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum
hosted a fascinating exhibit based on the papyrus legal records
of a family which lived in Egypt in the 5th Century BC. As a
testament to the lasting lessons such archaeological treasures
can transmit, it came to mind last week when Barack Obama became
the first sitting U.S. president to endorse same-sex marriage.
The papyri were the legal documents of a couple, Ananiah, a
Jewish temple official, and his wife Tamut, an Egyptian woman
who’d been sold into slavery as a child. They lived on the
island of Elephantine in the Nile, in a time when Egypt was part
of the Persian Empire and Jewish mercenaries guarded its
southern border. As it is today, relationships could be
complicated back then. When she married Ananiah on July 3, 449
BC, Tamut was owned by another man, Meshullam, who didn’t free
her or her daughter for another 22 years. Things worked out,
though. Later papyri record Ananiah giving Tamut part ownership
of their house, selling a house to