The Elephantine Petition to Bagohi (TAD A4.7)

A community of Jewish soldiers and their families lived on the island of Elephantine, at the southern border of Egypt, under Persian rule, and had a temple of their own there. In 410 BC Egyptian priests, with the help of the local Persian commander, destroyed it. This papyrus, excavated on the island in 1906–1907, is the community’s copy of the petition it sent three years later to Bagohi, governor of Judah, asking him to support the rebuilding.

The letter is dated to the twentieth of Marheshvan in the seventeenth year of King Darius, that is Darius II. It says that the writers had earlier written to Jehohanan the high priest and the priests in Jerusalem and had received no answer, and that they have also sent their case to Delaiah and Shelemiah, the sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria.

It is an original document of the fifth century BC, and it mentions these people in passing, with no interest in the story told in the Bible. It shows that the Sanballat of the book of Nehemiah was governor of Samaria, and it ties the high priests named in Nehemiah to a fixed date, which settles that Nehemiah’s king was Artaxerxes I; see Nehemiah Rebuilds the Walls of Jerusalem.