Judeans in the Land of the Nile

Kacper Ziemba; Frederik Poulsen

doi:10.5771/9783963273513

Summary

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