The Elephantine Memorandum of Bagohi and Delaiah (TAD A4.9)
A note of eleven short lines recording what Bagohi and Delaiah said about the destroyed temple at Elephantine. It is to be rebuilt on its site, and meal-offering and incense are to be offered there as before.
Read the text at elephantine.smb.museum ↗Text and translation in A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (1923), no. 32, p. 123 (Internet Archive) ↗
The papyrus is complete. It is not a letter with an address and a date but a memorandum: a record, in the first person, of what Bagohi and Delaiah “said to me”, for use before Arsames in Egypt. The museum’s record dates it between 407 and 400 BC. Cowley took it for the answer to the petition of November 407 BC (The Elephantine Petition to Bagohi (TAD A4.7)), which was addressed to Bagohi as governor of Judah and says that the same request had gone to Delaiah and Shelemiah, the sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria.
The message is that the “altar-house of the God of Heaven” at Elephantine, built before Cambyses and demolished by Vidranga in the fourteenth year of King Darius, is to be rebuilt on its site as it was, and that meal-offering and incense are to be offered on its altar as before. The petition had asked for meal-offering, incense and burnt offering. See the Judean Temple at Elephantine.
Cited in
- 410 BC to 407 BC, firm date