The Elephantine Papyri and Ostraca consist of thousands of documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of Elephantine and Aswan, which yielded hundreds of papyri and ostraca in hieratic and demotic Egyptian, Aramaic, Koine Greek, Latin and Coptic, spanning a period of 100 years in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. The documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives, and are thus an invaluable source of knowledge for scholars of varied disciplines such as epistolography, law, society, religion, language and onomastics. The Elephantine documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives: divorce documents, the manumission of slaves, and other business. The dry soil of Upper Egypt preserved the documents.
Hundreds of these Elephantine papyri span a period of 100 years, during the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. Legal documents and a cache of letters survived, turned up on the local "grey market" of antiquities starting in the late 19th century, and were scattered into several Western collections.
A number of the Aramaic papyri document the Jewish community among soldiers stationed at Elephantine under Achaemenid rule, 495–399 BCE. The so-called "Passover Letter" of 419 BCE (discovered in 1907), which appears to give instructions for the observance of the Festival of Unleavened Bread (though Passover itself is not mentioned in the extant text), is in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin.
The standard reference collection of the Aramaic documents from Elephantine is the Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt . [1]
Between 1815 and 1904, all discoveries were unprovenanced and came via informal discoveries and antiquities dealers; only later were they understood by scholars to have originated from Elephantine. The first known such papyri were bought by Giovanni Belzoni and Bernardino Drovetti; a number of Aramaic letters and a demotic letter were presented by Belzoni to the Musei Civici di Padova in 1819 and three hieratic pieces from Drovetti – and the Turin Aramaic Papyrus – were deposited at the new Museo Egizio in Turin in 1824. [2]
Formal excavation of the mound at Elephantine Island began in 1904, and continued for the next seven years. [2] Further finds were discovered through the first half of the 20th century. [2]
The mode of burial of the documents remains unknown, but they are thought to have been stored laterally and horizontally in close proximity to each other. [2]
The major Elephantine collections consist of discoveries from the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century, and these collections are now in museums in Berlin, Brooklyn, Cairo, London, Munich, and Paris. [2] The largest collection is in the Berlin State Museums with texts in each of the languages. [2]
Numerous smaller finds have been attributed to Elephantine: [2]
The publication of the documents from Elephantine discovered in the 19th and early 20th centuries, took many years, and is still ongoing. [2] The Aramaic and Demotic texts have received the greatest and most complete focus from scholars. [2]
Aramaic [2]
Demotic [2]
Greek [2]
Hieratic [2]
Another forty catalogued hieratic fragments in the Berlin Museum await publication. [2]
Coptic [2]
Arabic [2]
Latin [2]
The Elephantine papyri pre-date all extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, and thus give scholars a very important glimpse at how Judaism was practiced in Egypt during the fifth century BCE, [10] as they seem to show evidence of the existence in c. 400 BCE of a polytheistic sect of Jews. It is widely agreed that this Elephantine community originated in the mid-seventh or mid-sixth centuries BCE, likely as a result of Judean and Samaritan refugees fleeing into Egypt during the times of Assyrian and Babylonian invasions. [11] They seem to have had no knowledge of a written Torah or the narratives described therein. [12]
Also important is the fact that the papyri document the existence of a small Jewish temple at Elephantine, which possessed altars for incense offerings and animal sacrifices, as late as 411 BCE. Such a temple would be in clear violation of Deuteronomic law, which stipulates that no Jewish temple may be constructed outside of Jerusalem. [10] : 31 Furthermore, the papyri show that the Jews at Elephantine sent letters to the high priest in Jerusalem asking for his support in re-building their temple, which seems to suggest that the priests of the Jerusalem Temple were not enforcing Deuteronomic law at that time. Cowley notes that their petition expressed their pride at having a temple to Ya'u, ' Yahweh ' (no other god is mentioned in the petition) and gave no suggestion that their temple could be heretical. [12]
Upon first examination, this appears to contradict commonly accepted models of the development of Jewish religion and the dating of the Hebrew scriptures, which posit that monotheism and the Torah should have already been well-established by the time these papyri were written. Most scholars explain this apparent discrepancy by theorizing that the Elephantine Jews represented an isolated remnant of Jewish religious practices from earlier centuries, [10] : 32 or that the Torah had only recently been promulgated at that time. [13]
Niels Peter Lemche, Philippe Wajdenbaum, Russell Gmirkin, and Thomas L. Thompson have argued that the Elephantine papyri demonstrate that monotheism and the Torah could not have been established in Jewish culture before 400 BCE, and that the Torah was therefore likely written in the Hellenistic period, in the third or fourth centuries BCE. [14] [10] : 32ff
The Jews had their own temple to Yahweh [15] which functioned alongside that of the Egyptian god Khnum. Along with Yahweh, other deities – ʿAnat Betel and Asham Bethel – seem to have been worshiped by these Jews, evincing polytheistic beliefs. [16] Other scholars argue that these theonyms are merely hypostases of Yahweh, and dispute the idea that the Elephantine Jews were polytheists. [17]
Excavation work done in 1967 revealed the remains of the Jewish colony centered on a small temple. [18] The "Petition to Bagoas" (Sayce-Cowley collection) is a letter written in 407 BCE to Bagoas, the Persian governor of Judea, appealing for assistance in rebuilding the Jewish temple in Elephantine, which had recently been badly damaged by an anti-Jewish rampage on the part of a segment of the Elephantine community. [19]
In the course of this appeal, the Jewish inhabitants of Elephantine speak of the antiquity of the damaged temple:
Now our forefathers built this temple in the fortress of Elephantine back in the days of the kingdom of Egypt, and when Cambyses came to Egypt he found it built. They (the Persians) knocked down all the temples of the gods of Egypt, but no one did any damage to this temple.
The community also appealed for aid to Sanballat I, a Samaritan potentate, and his sons Delaiah and Shelemiah, as well as Johanan ben Eliashib. Both Sanballat and Johanan are mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah, 2:19, 12:23. [20]
There was a response of both governors (Bagoas and Delaiah) which gave the permission by decree to rebuild the temple written in the form of a memorandum: "1Memorandum of what Bagohi and Delaiah said 2to me, saying: Memorandum: You may say in Egypt ... 8to (re)build it on its site as it was formerly...". [21]
By the middle of the 4th century BCE, the temple at Elephantine had ceased to function. There is evidence from excavations that the rebuilding and enlargement of the Khnum temple under Nectanebo II (360–343) took the place of the former temple of YHWH.
In 2004, the Brooklyn Museum created a display entitled "Jewish Life in Ancient Egypt: A Family Archive From the Nile Valley," which featured the interfaith couple of Ananiah, an official at the temple of Yahou (a.k.a. Yahweh), and his wife, Tamut, who was previously an Egyptian slave owned by an Aramean master, Meshullam. [22] [23] [24] Some related exhibition didactics of 2002 included comments about significant structural similarities between Judaism and the ancient Egyptian religion and how they easily coexisted and blended at Elephantine. [25]
The papyri suggest that, "Even in exile and beyond, the veneration of a female deity endured." [26] The texts were written by a group of Jews living at Elephantine near the Nubian border, whose religion has been described as "nearly identical to Iron Age II Judahite religion". [27] The papyri describe the Jews as worshiping Anat-Yahu (mentioned in the document AP 44, line 3, in Cowley's numbering). Anat-Yahu is described as either the wife [28] (or paredra, sacred consort) [29] of Yahweh or as a hypostatized aspect of Yahweh. [27] [30]
The eight papyri contained at the Brooklyn Museum concern one particular Jewish family, providing specific information about the daily lives of a man called Ananiah, a Jewish temple official; his wife, Tamut, an Egyptian slave; and their children, over the course of forty-seven years. Egyptian farmers discovered the archive of Ananiah and Tamut on Elephantine Island in 1893, while digging for fertilizer in the remains of ancient mud-brick houses. They found at least eight papyrus rolls which were purchased by Charles Edwin Wilbour. He was the first person to find Aramaic papyri. The papyri have been grouped here by topic, such as marriage contract, real estate transaction, or loan agreement. [31]
Ancient marriage documents generally formalized already existing relationships. In this case, Ananiah and Tamut already had a young son when the document was drawn up. Because Tamut was a slave when she married Ananiah, the contract has special conditions: usually, it was the groom and his father-in-law who made Jewish marriage agreements, but Ananiah made this contract with Tamut's master, Meshullam, who legally was her father. In addition, special provision was made to free the couple's son, also a slave to Meshullam; perhaps Ananiah consented to the small dowry of either 7 or 15 shekels (the text is ambiguous) in order to obtain his son's freedom. Future children, however, would still be born slaves. In contrast to Jewish documents like this one, contemporaneous Egyptian marriage documents were negotiated between a husband and wife. [32]
Nearly twenty-two years after her marriage to Ananiah, Tamut's master released her and her daughter, Yehoishema, from slavery. It was rare for a slave to be freed. And though a slave could marry a free person, their children usually belonged to the master. As an institution, slavery in Egypt at that time differed in notable ways from the practice in some other cultures: Egyptian slaves retained control over personal property, had professions, and were entitled to compensation. During the Persian Period in Egypt, it was not uncommon to sell children, or even oneself, into slavery to pay debts.
This document to the right describes a property purchased by Ananiah, twelve years after his marriage, from a Persian soldier named Bagazust and his wife, Ubil. The property, in a town on Elephantine Island, named for the god Khnum, was located across the street from the Temple of Yauh and adjacent to the Persian family of Ubil's father. As such proximity might suggest, the Egyptians, Jews, and Persians in Elephantine all lived among one another. The renovation of the house and its gradual transfers to family members are the central concerns of the next several documents in Ananiah's family archive. [33]
Three years after purchasing the house from Bagazust and Ubil, Ananiah transferred ownership of an apartment within the now renovated house to his wife, Tamut. Although Tamut thereafter owned the apartment, Ananiah required that at her death it pass to their children, Palti and Yehoishema. As with all property transfers within a family, this gift was described as made "in love". [34]
Drawn up thirty years after the preceding papyrus, this document is one of several that gradually transferred ownership of Ananiah and Tamut's house to their daughter, Yehoishema, as payment on her dowry. The legal descriptions of the house preserve the names of Ananiah's neighbors. They included an Egyptian who held the post of gardener of the Egyptian god Khnum and, on the other side, two Persian boatmen. Image of document in gallery. [35]
For his daughter Yehoishema's dowry, Ananiah had transferred to her partial ownership of the house he shared with Tamut. After making more repairs to the building, Ananiah transferred a further section of the house, described in this document, to the dowry. Image of document in gallery. [36]
This papyrus records the sale of the remaining portion of Ananiah and Tamut's house to Yehoishema's husband. Possibly because the clients were dissatisfied with something the scribe had written, at one point the text of the document breaks off and then starts over again, repeating what has gone on before with some additions. The boundary description included here refers to the Temple of Yauh in Elephantine, now rebuilt eight years after its destruction in 410 BCE during a civil war conflict that arose out of a land dispute. Image of document in gallery below. [37]
Sometime in December 402 BCE, Ananiah son of Haggai borrowed two monthly rations of grain from Pakhnum son of Besa, an Aramean with an Egyptian name. This receipt would have been held by Pakhnum and returned to Ananiah son of Haggai when he repaid the loan. No interest is charged but there is a penalty for failing to repay the loan by the agreed date. The receipt demonstrates that friendly business relations continued between Egyptians and Jews in Elephantine after the expulsion of the Persians by Amyrtaeus, the only pharaoh of the Twenty-eighth Dynasty of Egypt. Image of document is in gallery below. [38]
Papyrus is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book.
Hieratic is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BCE. It was primarily written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus.
Elephantine is an island on the Nile, forming part of the city of Aswan in Upper Egypt. The archaeological digs on the island became a World Heritage Site in 1979, along with other examples of Upper Egyptian architecture, as part of the "Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae".
Papyrology is the study of manuscripts of ancient literature, correspondence, legal archives, etc., preserved on portable media from antiquity, the most common form of which is papyrus, the principal writing material in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Papyrology includes both the translation and interpretation of ancient documents in a variety of languages as well as the care and conservation of rare papyrus originals.
Amyrtaeusof Sais is the only pharaoh of the Twenty-eighth Dynasty of Egypt and is thought to be related to the royal family of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. He ended the first Persian occupation of Egypt and reigned from 404 BC to 399 BC. Amyrtaeus' successful insurrection inaugurated Egypt's last significant phase of independence under native sovereigns, which lasted for about 60 years until the Persians conquered the country again.
Demotic is the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Nile Delta. The term was first used by the Greek historian Herodotus to distinguish it from hieratic and hieroglyphic scripts. By convention, the word "Demotic" is capitalized in order to distinguish it from demotic Greek.
The Greek Magical Papyri is the name given by scholars to a body of papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt, written mostly in ancient Greek, which each contain a number of magical spells, formulae, hymns, and rituals. The materials in the papyri date from the 100s BCE to the 400s CE. The manuscripts came to light through the antiquities trade, from the 1700s onward. One of the best known of these texts is the Mithras Liturgy.
Egyptian medical papyri are ancient Egyptian texts written on papyrus which permit a glimpse at medical procedures and practices in ancient Egypt. These papyri give details on disease, diagnosis, and remedies of disease, which include herbal remedies, surgery, and magical incantations. Many of these papyri have been lost due to grave robbery. The largest study of the medical papyri to date has been undertaken by Humboldt University of Berlin and was titled Medizin der alten Ägypter.
The Rylands Papyri are a collection of thousands of papyrus fragments and documents from North Africa and Greece housed at the John Rylands University Library, Manchester, UK. The collection includes the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the "St John's fragment", a fragment from a papyrus codex, generally accepted as the earliest extant record of a Canonical gospel.
The Story of Aḥiqar, also known as the Words of Aḥiqar, is a story first attested in Imperial Aramaic from the fifth century BCE on papyri from Elephantine, Egypt, that circulated widely in the Middle and the Near East. It has been characterised as "one of the earliest 'international books' of world literature".
Hebrew and Aramaic papyri have increasingly been discovered from the 1960s onwards, although these papyri remain rare compared to papyri written in Koine Greek and Demotic Egyptian. The most valuable and religious texts were written on leather scrolls, parchment - such as the literary texts from Masada and Qumran, while papyrus was employed for cheaper, domestic use.
Wilhelm Spiegelberg was a German Egyptologist. He specialized in analyses of Demotic and hieratic text.
The Papyrus Carlsberg Collection is a collection of Egyptian papyri in the possession of the University of Copenhagen. It was founded in the early 1930s by Prof H. O. Lange with the help of funds from the Carlsberg Foundation. The majority of the documents were purchased between 1931 and 1938. Later on, in 1939, the foundation, with the consent of the Ministry of Education and the headmaster, presented its collection in the University of Copenhagen.
The Padua Aramaic papyri are a group of three Aramaic papyri thought to be from the 400s BCE, found in a collection of antiquities in the Italian city of Padua. The papyri are unprovenanced, but are thought to have been from Elephantine, which would make them the first Elephantine papyri and ostraca to have been discovered. They were acquired by Giovanni Belzoni in c.1815, together with a demotic letter; Belzoni presented them to the Musei Civici di Padova in 1819.
The Amherst papyri are a collection of ancient papyri now mostly kept in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. They were acquired by John Pierpont Morgan in 1912. They are named for Lord Amherst of Hackney, who began assembling the collection in the 1860s through purchases from R. T. Lieder and John Lee. He kept them at Didlington Hall in Norfolk.
The Papyrus Collection of the Austrian National Library, also known as the Rainer Collection and Vienna Papyrus Collection, is a papyrus collection of the Austrian National Library at Hofburg palace in Vienna. It contains around 180,000 objects overall. It is one of the most significant collections in papyrology, containing writings documenting 3 millennia of the history of Egypt from 1500 BCE–1500 CE: Ancient Egypt, Hellenistic Egypt, Roman Egypt, and Egypt during Muslim rule. It includes a specialist library of around 19,500 books and journals as well. The Austrian National Library preserves and restores the stored papyri and facilitates scholarly research and publication based on these ancient documents.
Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, often referred to as TAD or TADAE, is a four volume corpus of Aramaic inscriptions written during the period of ancient Egypt, written by Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni.
Papyrus Amherst 63 is an ancient Egyptian papyrus from the third century BC containing Aramaic texts in demotic script. The 35 texts date to the eighth and seventh centuries BC. One of these, a version of Psalm 20, provides an "unprecedented" extrabiblical parallel to a text from the Hebrew Bible. It syncretizes abundantly, including the names Yaho and Bethel, and mentions a khnh, a word meaning priestess of Yaho.
The Behistun papyrus, formally known as Berlin Papyrus P. 13447, is an Aramaic-Egyptian fragmentary partial copy of the Behistun inscription, and one of the Elephantine papyri discovered during the German excavations between 1906 and 1908.
Imperial Aramaic (IA) [Footnote: Other names: Official Aramaic, Reichsaramäisch. Because many of the surviving texts come from Egypt, some scholars speak of "Egyptian Aramaic."]… As noted, the documentation of IA is significantly greater than that of Old Aramaic; the hot and dry climate of Egypt has been particularly favorable to the preservation of antiquities, including Aramaic texts written on soft media such as papyrus or leather. The primary, although not exclusive, source of our knowledge of Persian-period Aramaic is a large number of papyri discovered on the island of Elephantine… All of the Egyptian Aramaic texts have been collected and reedited in the Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt… This is now the standard text edition.
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