Elephantine in Context

The Persian period has long been considered a »dark era« in Israel's history. For this reason, research has mainly focused on how it is depicted in the Hebrew Bible. A spectacular discovery of archaeological relics and epigraphic sources was hence hardly noticed: the military colony located on the island of Elephantine in the Nile, on the border between Egypt and present-day Sudan. The basic approach of this volume, which documents a three-year Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft project, is to break with a research tradition focusing on the Judeans (Jews) mentioned in the Aramaic papyri from Elephantine and instead investigate the military colony in a broader historical context also documented by Demotic and Egyptian-hieratic evidence found at Elephantine. The studies presented focus on three main subject areas: society and administration, religion, and literature. They show that historically the island of Elephantine hosted a multicultural society with several interactions between the Egyptians and the other inhabitants, and that it was also an important administrative centre for the Persian authorities.Reinhard G. Kratz/Bernd U. Schipper: Introduction

1. Society and Administration
Gulia Francesca Grassi: »Do We Know the Arameans?« (SAA 17,176). The Use of Ethnonyms in the Aramaic Documents from Egypt - Holger Gzella: The Scribal Habit of Achaemenid Administrators, Its Educational Underpinnings, and Its Reception in the Hebrew Bible - Alexander Schütze: The Legal Context of the Aramaic Legal Tradition on Elephantine Reconsidered - Sylvie Honigman: Serving the Kings, Building Temples, and Paying the »Jewish Tax«. Aramaic-Speaking Judeans and Their Descendants in Upper Egypt from Persian to Early Imperial Times

2. Religion
Alexandra von Lieven: Spätägyptische Religion in und um Elephantine - Collin Cornell/Brent A. Strawn: Is Judean Religion at Elephantine a Pidgin? Reassessing Its Relationship to Its Antecedents and Congeners - Bob Becking: »That Evil Act«. A Thick Description of the Crisis around the Demolition of the Temple of Yahô at Elephantine - Bernd U. Schipper: The Judeans/Arameans of Elephantine and Their Religion. An Egyptological Perspective

3. Literature
James D. Moore: »Ahikariana« at Elephantine. New Readings of Berlin P. 13446 and Developments in Ahiqar Research - Joachim Friedrich Quack: Die demotischen Fragmente der Erzählung und der Sprüche des Achiqar - Reinhard G. Kratz: Aḥiqar and Bisitun. The Literature of the Judeans at Elephantine - Tawny L. Holm: Papyrus Amherst 63 and the Arameans of Egypt. A Landscape of Cultural Nostalgia - Karel van der Toorn: The Background of the Elephantine Jews in Light of Papyrus Amherst 63