The Adoption Papyrus says an Egyptian stable master adopted his wife as his daughter to keep his estate from his siblings, and the widow freed and adopted their slave's children

The Adoption Papyrus, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (P. Ashmolean 1945.96), records two declarations from Sepermeru, a town south of Herakleopolis whose chief god was Seth. The first is dated to the day Ramesses XI took the throne. The stable master Nebnefer had no children. He made a written deed adopting his wife, Nanefer, also called Rennefer, a singer of Seth, as his daughter, and willed her everything they had acquired together. The deed names the danger: one of his brothers or sisters rising against her at his death and saying, "Give me my brother's share." Among his witnesses he placed his own sister, Huirymu. A widow normally kept rights to her dowry and a third of the marital property; as his "daughter" Nanefer took a child's share of all of it. The second declaration is dated year 18. The couple had bought a slave woman, Dienihathoriry, who bore a son and two daughters. Nanefer raised them. Her younger brother Padiu, also a stable master, married the eldest daughter, Taimenniut. Nanefer, by then a widow, declared all three children free people "of the land of Pharaoh" and adopted Padiu as her son. Her fields and goods were to be divided among her four children, Padiu counted as one of them, and she cursed anyone who called one of them a slave. What became of the property is not recorded.