Elephantine is an island in the Nile river at Egypt's southern border. It
has been a useful base for a number of military operations: patrolling the
border, watching river traffic, launching military and intelligence
operations into Ethiopia, providing a resting place and sometimes a fresh
escort for land caravans. The name Elephantine comes from one of its
most prosperous trade goods: elephant tusks. At times it has been
garrisoned by mercenaries-often including exiles and refugees. In the fifth
century B.C. it was partially occupied by a community of Jewish
mercenaries. We first learned of this colony in the late nineteenth century
when archaeological remains were examined and a number of papyrus
manuscripts were discovered. The Jews of Elephantine kept papyrus rolls
in jars under the floorboards of their homes. The legal system of the day,
which required presentation of deeds in any case involving property,
encouraged the saving of papyri. Of course, accounts, inventories, and
commissary lists were useful in the management of the colony. A few
literary works and personal letters were also kept with the other papers.
Nearly all we know of this community comes from archaeological research
at the site and from the study of the papyrus fragments.
The papyri are written in Aramaic, a Semitic language closely related to
Hebrew and used as an international language at the time. The people
belonging to the Jewish community worshipped a god whose name they
wrote 
, YHW, later amended to
, YHWH. They apparently had no
prohibition on speaking this name out loud. They gave themselves
theophorous or god bearing names: you can hear the "ya" in such names
as Ananiah, Azariah, and Hilkiah. These names may be parsed into brief
phrases: the above three names break down into YHW answered, YHW
helped, YHW is my portion. Each of these phrases apparently referred to a
line of scripture: Hilkiah, for instance, alludes to Psalm 73, verse 26, which
reads, in the language of the King James Bible, "God is the strength of my
heart and my portion forever." We conjecture that these names were
given according to circumstances surrounding a child's birth or as a kind
of thanks offered by the mother. The names have a strong religious
resonance - one probably not always realized, but one that might bring
reassurance in hard times. Each name could have been a kind of
mnemonic for a certain religious phrase closely associated with its bearer.
Names usually include the name of the individual's father-the father's
name indicated by the patronymic "bar" or "son of." Some of the names
are Egyptian; some come from other cultural backgrounds. Through the
cultural affinities of these names we know that intermarriage was
common. Perhaps these names indicate a certain amount of conscious or
unconscious syncretism.
The Elephantine Jews kept lists of their names - we don't know why.
The lists, however, suggest several interesting possibilities and the
ideogram formed by these possibilities is a profound one. Perhaps they
were tax lists or possibly they were lists of people who had suffered for
their religion (we know of other Jewish communities that kept such lists)
or possibly they were lists of men belonging to specific military groups or
regiments. You'll find three such lists on plates 5, 9, and 15; a list of names
translated into their theophorous elements on plate 11; and excerpts from
the scriptural referents of some of these names on plates 3 and 7 in my
text.
Scholars are uneasy about the religious beliefs of these people. Their
names include the names of strange gods, they swore oaths by foreign
deities, they apparently spent time in the temples of gods other than YHW,
and distributed some of their religious funds to Anathbethal and
Eshembethal. They had their own temple to YHW, and not just a simple
synagogue or meeting house but a rather grand temple suitable for making
burnt offerings. Even this gives scholars pause. They worshipped other
gods in addition to YHW there. And, as important, according to
Deuteronomy, the Lord had chosen Jerusalem as his site and that's where
the temple should be-other lands were unclean and temples were not to be
built on them, even if the temple at Jerusalem had been destroyed when
they left or were driven out of their own land. All of this rhymes nicely
with the 44th chapter of Jeremiah, where we find, "ye provoke me unto
wrath with the works of your hands, burning incense unto other gods in
the land of Egypt." We don't know if the priests of this community would
have answered somewhat along the lines of a later passage in Jeremiah:
"As for the word thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we
will not harken unto thee."
Though the Elephantine Jews married Egyptians, swore by the goddess
Sati, and fraternized with Egyptian priests, they apparently were not
wholly accepted by the other inhabitants of the island: in the summer of
419 B.C. the temple was destroyed in a pogrom. During a good part of the
fifth century B.C. Egypt was under Persian domination. Though the
Elephantine Jews came to the area before the Persian take over, the natives
may have associated them with Persian rule. Perhaps there were elements
of Jewish religion that offended the Egyptians - perhaps they resented
Passover (which was held at least occasionally at Elephantine) or perhaps
they objected to animal sacrifices (they venerated and sometimes even
mummified animals). Probably, though, the Elephantine Jews were
victims of the kinds of prejudices from which their relatives have suffered
in other places at other times. Some scholars hold that the destruction of
the temple was the beginning of the end for the colony; others maintain
that it survived a considerable time after this. We know that the
Elephantine Jews at least started to rebuild their temple.
My basic source was Arthur Cowley's Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth
Century B.C., Oxford, 1923; my reading was supplemented and amended
by Bezalel Porten's Archives from Elephantine, University of California,
1968. Readers interested in the complete unworked texts should see the
former, those interested in more information on the Elephantine Jews
should consult the latter. My texts are offered as poems, not scholarship or
antiquarian speculation: their significance is completely in the present.
Thanks to Jerome Rothenberg for getting me started, and to him and to
Harris Lenowitz for help, advice, and encouragement on this book.