Love and longing in Elephantine

Riffling through the ancient mailbag

This is Life as a Sacred Text, an expansive, loving, everybody-celebrating, nobody-diminished, justice-centered voyage into one of the world’s most ancient and holy books. We’re generally working our way through Leviticus these days. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here.

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We’re just going somewhere else today, mostly because I fell down this rabbit hole recently and I’d like to pull you in, too.

Elephantine is an island on the Nile, in Upper Egypt.

Keep reading. So much drama for one tiny island.

Starting in the seventh century, BCE, there’s evidence that Judean mercenaries and their families lived there—and it seems that after the destruction of the Temple and the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BCE, more Judean refugees traveled south and settled there. They also—notably, and somewhat shockingly to contemporary Jews, steeped as we are in the “one Temple, in Jerusalem, thank you very much” philosophy—maintained a temple on the island, to which they offered sacrifices.

In the late 19th c, some caches of papyri were discovered that revealed extraordinary amounts about the Jews who were living there during the 5th to 4th c. BCE. BCE!!

Some Psalms were 5th c. BCE. Ezra-Nehemia were 4th c. at latest, probably, with additions and changes likely into the Hellenistic period (Alexander the Great conquered the Land of Israel in 332 BCE), probably ditto Chronicles. Esther’s 4th c. BCE, and so on.

These letters are happening AS THE HEBREW BIBLE IS GETTING WRITTEN.

Now do you get how cool this is?

They’re written in Aramaic; they talk about Shabbat and Passover observance, and intermarriage was common—the ketubot, wedding contracts, would specify whether one was marrying a Jew or an Egyptian.

The discovery of ancient documents is always the coolest, but my favorite is when we find documents that reveal a little of the stories of the people who exist in a place.

So this is really just about that—about some of the stories of people’s lives a long time ago, and what kinds of letters they wrote to each other.

OK, some background on the temple thing: We know from letters dating around 410 BCE that the Judeans on the Island believed that the temple predated the Persian conquest of Egypt in 525 BCE. (Again, the Judean colony in Elephantine probably started about a century before then.)

Only there was a problem

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: They didn’t just offer up grain and incense to God (aka [Tetragrammaton]), but also the kind of animal sacrifices that were part of our usual Temple toolbox—goats, bulls, pigeons, sheep, etc.

The thing that worked great in Jerusalem got, uh, a little stickier given that the Egyptians on Elephantine worshiped Khnum, the ram-headed deity who oversaw the waters of the Nile. They were not happy with the Jews and their shawarma.

The priests of Khnum destroyed the temple in 410 BCE; it was rebuilt after getting permission from the Persian authorities. (Evidently letters asking for support from the High Priest and other machers in Jerusalem were not returned. We can make some guesses, various, about what was going on, but we will never know.)

Anyway, their temple was destroyed for good in 400 BCE, after the Egyptians were able to successfully drive the Persian Empire out of town.

One of the most famous documents is, fittingly to this season(ish), the “Passover Papryus.” It’s addressed to Yedaniah, the head of the Elephantine community, from Hananiah—a name found in a lot of biblical books, probably was just a pretty common name. Arasames was—we have confirmed elsewhere—the actual Persian satrap in Egypt. Nisan is the Hebrew month in which Passover occurs.

People who work with ancient manuscripts have various conventions with regards to words that can’t be made out or that have faded or are missing from a text. I’m basically trying to follow the leads of other scholars (various), below, around that.

And this is the actual document translated below!

To my brothers, Yedaniah and his colleagues of the Judahite garrison, (from) your brother Hananiah. May God seek the welfare of my brothers. Now this year, the 5th year of King Darius [so: 419 BCE] word was sent from the king to Arsames, saying: In the month of Nisan, let there be a Passover for the Judahite garrison. Now accordingly count fourteen days of the month Nisan and keep the Passover, and from the 15th day to the 21st day of Nisan are seven days of Unleavend Bread. Be clean and take heed. Do not work on the 15th day and on the 21st day. Also, drink no intoxicants; and anything in which there is leaven, not eat, from the 15th day from sunset until the 21st day of Nisan, seven let it not be seen among you; do not bring it into your houses, but seal it up during those days. Let this be done as King Darius commanded.

Seems like a simple little letter, but actually there are a lot of interesting things, here.

1. We need official permission from the emperor-of-which-we-are-a-vassal-state to keep Pesach?!? What happens if that is denied, or not officially granted?

2. We unsurprisingly don’t see what was (clearly!) a later Rabbinic concept of observing a second day of a holiday in the Diaspora “just in case” one is unsure what time the holiday came in.

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3. Their Passover observance certainly has the concept of “careful about your booze,”—since most booze has leaven (wheat, barley, etc), and the big trend of potato vodka and agave tequila taking over all the ancient Near Eastern bars was still a few years to come. This tells us that they’re already thinking about not eating less obvious forms of leavening/chametz, but evidently nobody has told these Jews living DURING THE BIBLICAL ERA that they're not doing Pesach right unless they have multiple breakdowns in the process of cleaning Cheerio dust out of the car seats?

Anyway, my favorite things about these documents are the truly mundane things.

Fragments of ancient IOUs or account ledgers:

… of a debt of barley which Phzw the boatman wrote…

As well as some letters that offered a lot of buildup for, ultimately, some evergreen life advice:

To My Lady Selewah, your servant Hosea. It is we[ll for me here.] … Greetings to My Lord Menahem, greetings to my Lady Abihi, greetings to Njn and her daughter; greetings to Ta-Hnumn and Yeho-yisma; greetings to Mesullemet; greetings to Hassul; greetings to [NN and to the…] that are upon you/that you are responsible for: greetings to Kilkeliyah. And now, you sent [me a message asking about…] Ya’us said to me: “Sell it for gold.” To My Lady Selewah, your servant [Hosea son of Natan.]

OK OK OK I absolutely included this because it’s funny, come on, it’s like perfect comic timing and everything— but also it’s worth noting that the boss here is a woman. Elephantine Judean women enjoyed high rates of literacy—almost a third of the contributors to the letter archive were women, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. And while there are women described at all ends of the social spectrum, many here employ male merchants, including some who were quite wealthy.

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And then there were the letters with

Tunic drama.

This (below) is a reconstruction of a letter by J.M. Lindenberger, except where I changed “Greetings” to “Hi” because hey, if we’re gonna do the thing. I just love so much how human this is, how connected it makes me feel to our eternal humanity:

Greetings to the temple of Bethel and the temple of the Queen of Heaven.

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To my sister Nanaiham from your brother Nabusha. I bless you by Ptah—may he let you see me again in good health!/בשׁלם Hi/שׁלם to Bethelnetan. Hi שׁלם to Nikkai(?) and Asah and Tashai and Anati and Ati and Reia.

And now the tunic you sent me has arrived. I found it all streaked. And I just don’t like it at all! Do you have plenty of other kinds? If I knew I would exchange it for a dress for Ati. And now I do wear the tunic you brought to Syene for me.

And now please have some castor oil sent to us, so we can exchange it for olive oil. And now don’t worry about me and Makkebanit; let us worry about you instead! Take care of Bethelnetan; keep Habib away from him! And now if I can find anyone dependable, I will send you some something.

Hi /שׁלם to my father Psami from your servant Nabusha. Hi to my mother Mama. Hi שׁלם to my brother Beti and his household. Hi שׁלם to Wahpre. To Nanaiham from Nabushezib son of Petekhnum. To Syene.

It’s so perfect. “Big lovies, but ugh, honey, that tunic!! You can fix it, right? And be a dear and hook a girl up with some castor oil?? KISSES TO EVERYONE! XOXOXO MWAHHH.”

And the other highly relatable family notes. Like this letter from Makkabanit son of Psami to his sister Tashai (becauae, again, many girls and women could read!!!) in the late 6th early 5th c BCE:

Greetings... To my sister Tashai from your brother Makkibanit. I am blessed by Ptah that he may show me your face in peace. Nabusha is well here. Do not worry about him. I am not making him leave Memphis.

And if you thought certain ways of being and doing Jewish aren’t as ancient as our use of the written word, well, guess again. From Nabusha, son of Petekhnum, and Makkibanit to Tarou and Tabi:

To my sisters Tarou and Tabi from your brother Nabusha and Makkibanit. We blessed you by Ptah that he may show me your face in peace. And now, you should know that nothing is brought to us from Syene. And moreover, since I left Syene, Sheil has not dispatched me a letter or anything (else).

And now, let them bring us a chest …. And now if you can bring us castor oil, bring it in the hand of Harwodj son of Bethelshezib who is coming down…

And what is this that a letter you have not dispatched to me?!

And I, a snake bit me and I was dying and you did not send (to inquire) if alive I was or dead I was.

Featuring all of the classical features of the genre:

• Opening greeting

• Complaint of general lack of information

• Complaint about specific individual who has not been in touch

• Request

• Specification about who, really, we trust to get the job done

• Complaint to sender about lack of communication

• Driving the stake of guilt deeper in still

Not sure what the takeaways are, apart from the dawning understanding that my grandparents were working from a very ancient template, though.

And that human beings’ lives are and have always been simultaneously mundane and holy—just sometimes we can see it more clearly from a distance.

It’s true now, too, though.

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💖 Sending a big pile of blessings and goodness your way. 💖

1. Yes, in addition to the things those of us with that post-Deuteronomic “One Temple is plenty, thank you” outlook might think. And the animal sacrifice and stuff, sure. Super glad we’ve moved on into prayer, ngl

2. Judaism is a lunar religion, and new months used to be “established” by sightings of the new moon, with announcements sent out kinda like the lighting of the beacons scene in Lord of the Rings. The addition of marking a second holy day in the diaspora developed in the event that you weren’t sure when the message was sent about when the New Moon had come in, since you’re far from the center of action. You could still play it safe, if you kept two days you were definitely going to be right one of those days. But that clearly hasn’t happened by this point.

3. Yeahhh, seems like the Elephantine Jews’ monotheism was sometimes a little..fuzzy..