A new discovery from the Roman empire outlines a juicy case of second-century crime. Containing an extraordinary 133 lines of ...

"This is the best-documented Roman court case from Judea apart from the trial of Jesus." In the 1950s, an ancient papyrus scroll found in a cave in the Judean Desert was filed away in a storage room ...

“Forgery and tax fraud carried severe penalties under Roman law, including hard labor or even capital punishment,” Dolganov ...

The document is the longest Greek document found in the Judean Desert, spanning over 133 lines of written text.

The historic text was written on a scroll of papyrus – a material similar to ... of the defendants 'who may be cheaply bought' with a history of 'committing violence and sedition and banditry'.

The papyrus revealed how the imperial state dealt with financial crimes - specifically tax fraud involving slaves - in Judaea ...

The papyrus details the prosecution of two main defendants: Gadalias, a notary’s son and something of an ancient Roman “bad ...

Scientists then used AI to piece together the images, search for ink that reveals where there is writing, and enhance the clarity of the text. The process led to a 3D image of the scroll that allowed ...

"This papyrus is extraordinary because it provides direct insight ... Gadalias, the son of a notary and possibly a Roman citizen, had a criminal history involving violence, extortion, counterfeiting, ...

"This is the best-documented Roman court case from Iudaea apart from the trial of Jesus," said one researcher.

There, in Luxor, he bought this papyrus, which turns out to be the largest mathematical text we know, not just from Egypt but from anywhere in the ancient world. As it is extremely sensitive to ...

“This papyrus is extraordinary because it provides ... Gadalias, the son of a notary and possibly a Roman citizen, had a history of criminal activities, including counterfeiting, extortion ...