The Babylonian Exile – 4 / The Jewish Diaspora in Egypt

“And These from the Land of Syene”

The fate of the Jewish exiles in Babylonia would probably be of little concern to us if the restoration of the Jewish state in the late sixth-early fifth century had not been the work of Jewish leaders who came from Babylonia. These leaders led the initial return to Jerusalem, the subsequent rebuilding of the Temple under Zerubbabel and, finally, the cultic/national reforms and the reconstruction of the city under Ezra and Nehemiah. In the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the local Judahite population (which had not been exiled) is regarded with contempt; the only citizens who seem to matter (and the only Temple personnel allowed to function) are those with proper genealogical records brought from Babylonia. Nonetheless, there were Jews who never left the land, and there were Jewish Diaspora communities in places other than Babylonia—most notably in Egypt.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah mention no return of Egyptian Jews to Judah during this period. This may have been because there were none, or none worth mentioning, or none the Babylonian Jews wished to acknowledge. Nevertheless, we are reminded of the words of Jeremiah “concerning all the Jews that dwelt in the land of Egypt, at Migdol, at Tahpanhes, at Memphis, and in the land of Pathros …” (Jeremiah 44:1–14):

“…will punish those who dwell in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, so that none of the remnant of Judah who have come to live in the land of Egypt shall escape or survive or return to the land of Judah, to which they desire to return to dwell there; for they shall not return, except some fugitives. ” (Jeremiah 44:13–14)

On the other hand, Deutero-Isaiah, a prophet active among the exiles in Babylonia, included the Jews of Egypt among those he envisioned as returning to Zion: “Lo, these shall come from afar, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene” (Isaiah 49:12).

“The land of Syene” was the southern frontier of Egypt at the first cataract of the Nile (modern Aswan), as in the formulaic expression “the land of Egypt … from Migdol to Syene, as far as the border of Ethiopia [or Nubia]” (Ezekiel 29:10). Syene was located at the southern border, and Migdol was on the northeastern frontier. The military encampments at both of these sites had settlements of foreign mercenaries and their families.

The existence of a Jewish community at Syene is known from the Elephantine papyri (the major fortress at Syene was on an island in the Nile later called Elephantine; Jewish troops stationed there referred to it as Yeb).

The existence of Jews in the Migdol area, on the northeastern border of Egypt, may also be alluded to in the Elephantine documents. Jeremiah, as we have seen, speaks of Jews at Migdol and at nearby Tahpanhes (later called Daphni, modern Tel Dafneh) and also at Noph (Memphis) and Pathros (Nubia). According to Jeremiah, Johanan ben Kareah led his group of refugees to the area of Migdol and Tahpanhes after Gedaliah’s assassination disrupted the political and social order (Jeremiah 43:8–13).

Archaeological Evidence for the Egyptian Diaspora

Excavations east of the Suez Canal under the direction of Eliezer Oren of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have revealed that, in the early sixth century BCE, this area was fertile and densely populated, and had a navigable water system, as well as irrigation and drainage canals. Migdol was not only an Egyptian military center but a commercial and industrial area. Imported pottery types testify to the existence of a large foreign element in the population, which is not surprising because the Egyptians had, since the reign of Psammetichus I (664–610 BCE), come to rely on foreign mercenaries to garrison their border stations and to fill the ranks of their regular army. Nor is it surprising that Jeremiah’s catalogue of areas of Jewish residence follows a line of defense systems established by the Egyptians, from the northeast border (Migdol) to Nubia (Pathros). It was in these centers that Jewish soldiers and their families lived, and so it was to these centers that their compatriots would have come when settling in Egypt.

A good deal of information concerning life in the Jewish settlement at the border station of Syene/Yeb during the fifth century BCE comes from the Elephantine papyri. The papyri—Aramaic archival documents, including copies of correspondence, memoranda, contracts and other legal materials—first came to light at the end of the 19th century and were published by numerous scholars over a 60-year period (1906–1966). They have recently been the subject of intensive investigation (with corrections of some mistakes made by earlier scholars) by Bezalel Porten of Hebrew University. The documents date from 495 to 399 BCE and are thus roughly contemporaneous with the reconstruction of the Jewish state under Ezra and Nehemiah; but the Jewish community at Elephantine had existed for at least a century before the earliest Elephantine documents.

The most intriguing aspect of Jewish communal life at Elephantine was a temple dedicated to the Hebrew God Yahu (YAW, a variant form of YHWH). According to the papyri, the temple had been destroyed by the Egyptians at the instigation of the priests of the local cult of Kimura in the 14th year of Darius II (410 BCE). Exactly when the Temple was built is unknown, but it was sometime prior to the Persian conquest of Egypt in 525 BCE Jedaniah, the Jewish communal leader at Elephantine, wrote to Bagohi, the Persian governor of Judah, requesting assistance in rebuilding the Elephantine temple. Jedaniah also wrote to Delaiah and Shelemiah, the sons and successors of Sanballat, governor of Samaria, with the same request. Other correspondence with Jerusalem included requests for information on the correct procedure for observing the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Pesah-Passover) and on matters of cultic purity.

Although Jedaniah represented his Elephantine temple as a regular Jewish sanctuary, just like the Jerusalem Temple, scholars have tended to regard the cult of Yahu at Elephantine as a syncretistic mixture of Yahwism and Canaanite (especially northern Canaanite) cults of Bethel, Anat-Bethel, Eshem, Eshem-Bethel, Herem-Bethel and Anath-YHW. This is because the names of these deities are referred to in judicial oaths and salutations used by Jews in the Elephantine documents. Accordingly, a northern, Israelite origin of these colonists has been suggested. Porten, on the other hand, contends that “the evidence for a syncretistic communal cult of the Jewish deity dissipates upon close inspection” (although “individual Jewish contact with paganism remains”). According to Porten, the temple was established by priests from Jerusalem who had gone into self-imposed exile in Egypt during the reign of King Manasseh (c. 650 BCE) to establish a purer Yahwistic temple there.

Whether or not the cult of Yahu at Elephantine was syncretistic, or the Jews of Elephantine were themselves syncretistic, one thing remains clear: Pagan religion was more influential in the life of the Jews of Upper Egypt than it was in the life of Jews in Babylonia. The tradition preserved in Jeremiah 44:15–30 records the worship of a goddess called “the Queen of Heaven” (compare Jeremiah 7:18) by the Jews of Johanan ben Kareah’s community in the Pathros-Migdol area of Egypt. Similar tendencies probably prevailed among the Jews in Upper Egypt. This may explain why Jeremiah judges the Jews of Egypt so harshly. This may also be why we read nothing of the Jews of Egypt playing any sort of role in the reconstruction of the Jewish nation during the Persian period.