The Judean Temple at Elephantine

On the island of Elephantine in the Nile stood a fortress, and in it, under Persian rule, lived a community of Judeans. They had a temple there for their God, whose name the papyri write YHW. In a letter of 407 BC they say that their fathers built it in the days of the kings of Egypt, and that Cambyses found it standing when he entered the country (Elephantine petition to Bagohi recto 1–6, 13–14).

An earlier papyrus is a letter of instructions to the community. In the fifth year of Darius II, 419/418 BC, one Hananiah wrote to Jedaniah and his colleagues, “the Jewish garrison”, that word had been sent from the king to Arsames. The surviving lines speak of the days from the fifteenth to the twenty-first of Nisan, of purity, and of leaven. The papyrus is broken; the word “Passover”, which editors supply, is not preserved (Elephantine Passover letter recto 1–verso 4).

In Tammuz of Darius’s fourteenth year, when Arsames had gone to the king, the priests of the god Khnum came to an agreement with Vidranga, the chief official there. Vidranga wrote to his son Naphaina, the garrison commander at Syene, who led Egyptians and other troops against the temple. They razed it, smashed its stone pillars and five gateways of hewn stone, burned the doors and the cedar roof, and took the gold and silver basins (Elephantine petition to Bagohi recto 4–13).

The community put on sackcloth and fasted. It wrote to Bagohi, the governor of Judah, to Jehohanan the high priest and the priests in Jerusalem, and to the nobles of the Jews, and got no reply (Elephantine petition to Bagohi recto 15–verso 2). Three years later Jedaniah and his fellow priests wrote to Bagohi again. Since the attack, they said, no meal-offering, incense or burnt offering had been made in the temple. They asked for a letter supporting its rebuilding, and added that they had sent the same appeal to Delaiah and Shelemiah, the sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria (Elephantine petition to Bagohi recto 1, verso 2–13).

A memorandum records what Bagohi and Delaiah said: the “altar-house of the God of Heaven” at Elephantine was to be rebuilt on its site, and meal-offering and incense offered on its altar as before. It does not name burnt offering (Elephantine memorandum lines 1–11). In a draft on another papyrus five men, headed by a Jedaniah son of Gemariah, offer their lord a payment if the temple is rebuilt and no sheep, ox or goat is made a burnt offering there, only incense and meal-offering (Elephantine offer of payment lines 1–14).

These papyri, found on the island itself, show Judeans in Egypt with an altar of their own, seeking support in both Judah and Samaria. Deuteronomy restricts burnt offerings to the one place that the Lord chooses (Deuteronomy 12:13–14). Nehemiah names a Sanballat as his opponent, and the book lists a Johanan among the priests (Nehemiah 2:10) (Nehemiah 12:22–23); see Nehemiah rebuilds the walls.