@book{2026:ziemba:judeans_in,
title = {Judeans in the Land of the Nile},
year = {2026},
note = {The significance of Egypt for the history of the Judeans in the 1st
millennium BCE is difficult to overestimate. The geographical
proximity of the land of the Nile and Judah meant that their political
and cultural fates were intertwined. This is evidenced by the attempts
of Egyptian rulers to extend their dominance over Judah or, more
broadly, Palestine. Egypt was also home to Judeans and communities
originating from Judah. Before it became one of the largest centers of
the diaspora in the Hellenistic period, there was a Judean community
living in Elephantine-Syene on the Nile. This was at a time when Egypt
and Judah were under the rule of the Persian Empire. We know of it
thanks to an Aramaic archive of papyri and ostraca from the Persian
era that originate from this area. These texts – mainly private,
legal, and administrative documents – allow us to reconstruct
various aspects of the lives of members of this Judean community.
Egypt is also the source of Papyrus Amherst 63, a text written in
Demotic script in Aramaic and containing certain themes that invite us
to link it with the presence of Judeans in Egypt. Moreover, Egypt and
its relations with Israelites/Judeans are important topics in the
Hebrew Bible. Egypt is not only the land of first exile (the Exodus
story) and the topic of prophetic invectives (e.g., Isa 19; Jer 46;
Ezek 29–32) but also the country where Judeans could find shelter
and prosper (Patriarchal narratives; Joseph Story). It is equally
remarkable that biblical authors, unlike Judeans in Babylonia, often
do not mention their co-religionists living in Egypt during the
Persian period; the negative assessment of Judeans living there (Jer
42–44) underlines this fact. In light of the Elephantine papyri,
this silence is even more puzzling. These issues were the focus of
papers presented at the workshop ‘Judean Diaspora and Biblical Texts
in Achaemenid Egypt,’ organized at the University of Copenhagen on
August 19 and 20, 2024, as part of the research project Divergent
Views of Diaspora in Ancient Judaism. The contributions are organized
into three thematic sections: Egypt under Persian rule; Elephantine
and Papyrus Amherst 63; and representations of Egypt in the Hebrew
Bible.                                                            
Reihe                                Ägypten und Altes Testament -
136},
edition = {1},
publisher = {Zaphon},
address = {Münster},
series = {Ägypten und Altes Testament},
volume = {136},
editor = {Ziemba, Kacper and Poulsen, Frederik}
}