Elephantine Papyri - the name of official documents and business letters, as well as private correspondence of the Jews sent by King Manasseh to help Pharaoh Psammetikh and housed topics near the borders of Nubia , on the island of Elephantine . Most of the documents are in Aramaic .
The archive of the Elephantine garrison has been preserved thanks to the arid climate of Lower Egypt . The documents cover the period from 495 to 399 BC. e. They were discovered by German researchers at the end of the 19th century and published from 1906 to 1953. Of particular interest is the letter of 419 BC. e. containing prescriptions for the celebration of Passover .
Perhaps the most sensational materials of the Elephantine papyrus relate to the existence in Elephantine of a special Temple in which local Jews worshiped not only Yahweh , but also other gods, including the Canaanite Anat . This temple was subsequently destroyed by the Egyptians. The polytheism of the Egyptian Jews should be associated with some exposures of the prophet Jeremiah (44: 7 f.)
See also
- History of Jews in Egypt
Literature
- Emil G. Kraeling, The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri , 1953, Yale University Press.
- Bezalel Porten, with JJ Farber, CJ Martin, G. Vittman, editors. 1996. The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change, (Brill Academic)
- Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine: The Life of an Ancient Jewish Military Colony , 1968. (Berkeley: University of California Press)
- Yochanan Muffs (Prolegomenon by Baruch A. Levine), 2003. Studies in the Aramaic Legal Papyri from Elephantine (Brill Academic)
- A. van Hoonacker, Une Communauté Judéo-Araméenne à Éléphantine, en Égypte aux VIe et Ve siècles av. J.-C. , 1915, London, The Schweich Lectures
- Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt , 1995, Jewish Publication Society
- Elias J. Bickerman. Jews in the Hellenistic era . Date of treatment November 4, 2015.
- Elephantine - article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia