Deed of sale

This Coptic document is written on parchment, a material made from animal hide. It comes from the private archives of one Raphael, which contains in total eleven deeds of sale, wills, and other valuable papers. This document is the oldest one in the archives (AD 1042) and is the deed of sale of a house for Raphael, signed by seven witnesses. It was probably found in a house in the city of Teshlot (near Assiut, in Central Egypt). Since all the documents in the archive are dated precisely, we can follow Raphael’s life, and see that he became a prosperous man. This shows that Copts were certainly not oppressed by Muslims in this period.