Ketubbah is perhaps the most beautiful and romantic chapter in the Jewish tradition. It has accompanied the Jewish people throughout the centuries, and no Jewish wedding anywhere could be solemnized without it. Following the Talmudic sages, authorities on Jewish law state quite categorically that "A man may not live with his wife, even for one single hour, without a Ketubbah." Despite its importance, the Ketubbah is not mentioned in the Bible. The first reference to contract associated with a Jewish marriage ceremony is in the apocryphal book of Tobit, written sometime in the third or fourth centuries. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a few marriage contracts were discovered among the Elephantine Papyri--an archive of documents, written in Aramaic, belonging to the Jewish military colony in the Egyptian Island of the Elephantine some 2,500 years ago. These constitute the earliest known Jewish marriage contracts. However, the Ketubbah as it is know today received its form much later during the Talmudic period.