event · E0414
Elephantine Temple Petition בקשת ידניה לשיקום מקדש יה״ו
Two drafts of an Aramaic petition, internally dated 20 Marcheshvan, year 17 of Darius II (November 407 BCE), from Jedaniah son of Gemariah and the priests of the Judean colony at Elephantine to Bagavahya (Bagoas), Persian governor of Yehud. They report that in 410 BCE the priests of the Egyptian god Khnum, with the collusion of the local Persian commander Vidranga, destroyed the colony's temple of YHW — and they beg leave to rebuild it, noting that the temple had stood since before Cambyses conquered Egypt. Found by the German expedition of 1907 in the Jedaniah communal archive, the drafts are in the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin (TAD A4.7–A4.8). A surviving memorandum records the answer: rebuild permitted, with meal-offering and incense but no animal sacrifice.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- בקשת ידניה לשיקום מקדש יה״ו
- Also known as
- Petition to Bagavahya, Jedaniah Petition, TAD A4.7-A4.8
- Era
- bible
II. When
- Traditional
- c. 3517 AM if hung from the atlas's temple-completion anchor (3408 AM ↔ 516 BCE); the traditional count compresses the Persian period, so the two reckonings diverge here
- Academic
- 407 BCE
- Date range
- 20 Marcheshvan, year 17 of Darius II — 25 November 407 BCE; two drafts of the petition survive
- Precision
- exact
III. Where
- Places
- Elephantine
IV. What
- Events
- Return to Zion, Building of the Second Temple
Why it matters
This letter is direct documentary proof of something the Tanakh never mentions: a functioning Jewish temple, with altar and offerings, in Egypt — operating through the very decades when the rebuilt Second Temple stood in Jerusalem. And the world it reveals is precisely the world of Ezra and Nechemyah, seen from the outside: the petitioners appeal to Yehohanan the high priest in Jerusalem, to the governor of Yehud, and to the sons of Sanballat governor of Shomron — Nechemyah's adversary, here simply an address on an envelope. The answer they received is as telling as the request: rebuild, but without animal sacrifice — Jerusalem's monopoly on the altar, negotiated in Persian administrative prose. One community's catastrophe preserved, in duplicate drafts, the entire political map of the return to Zion.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| The petition survives in two drafts (TAD A4.7–A4.8), internally dated 20 Marcheshvan, year 17 of Darius II — November 407 BCE — from Jedaniah and the priests of Elephantine to Bagavahya, governor of Yehud. It reports that in 410 BCE, while the satrap Arsames was away, the priests of Khnum with the collusion of the Persian official Vidranga had the temple of YHW at Elephantine razed, and it asks permission to rebuild. The drafts, found by Rubensohn and Zucker's German expedition in 1907, are in the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin, and were first published by Eduard Sachau. | archaeology external | ★★★★★ | |
| The petition is direct evidence that a Jewish temple with an altar — offering meal-offering, incense, and burnt-offering — operated at Elephantine alongside the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem (Building of the Second Temple), in tension with the Torah's centralization of sacrifice at the chosen place. The petitioners state the temple already stood when Cambyses conquered Egypt (525 BCE) and that he left it standing when Egyptian temples were damaged.
Yeshayahu speaks of an altar to Hashem "in the midst of the land of Egypt" (19:19) — later invoked for Onias's temple at Leontopolis, and hovering over Elephantine too; the atlas notes the resonance without claiming the verse for this building.
|
archaeology external biblical | ★★★★★ | |
| The petition's address book is Nechemyah's world attested from outside: the writers say they had already written to Yehohanan the high priest and his colleagues the priests in Jerusalem — the Yohanan of Nechemyah 12:22 — and, in parallel, to Delaiah and Shelemiah, sons of Sanballat governor of Shomron, Nechemyah's antagonist. A surviving memorandum (TAD A4.9) records the joint answer of Bagavahya and Delaiah: rebuild the altar-house on its site, with meal-offering and incense — animal sacrifice conspicuously omitted. | archaeology external biblical | ★★★★★ | |
| Two shorter letters of the same Jedaniah communal archive fill in the crisis's background and are tracked here rather than as separate entities: TAD A4.3 complains that "Khnum is against us since Hananiah came to Egypt" — tying the friction with the Khnum priesthood to the arrival of the official behind the Passover Papyrus (Passover Papyrus) — and the fragmentary TAD A4.4 reports arrests of community members, men and women, taken at the gate in Thebes during the troubles.
Consolidation per the batch audit: A4.3 and A4.4 are supporting correspondence, folded into the petition entity as claims.
|
archaeology external | ★★★★☆ |
|
| The AM placement (c. 3517) hangs the petition's academic date from the atlas's temple-completion anchor (3408 AM ↔ 516 BCE, per Galut Bavel), as for the Murashu archive (Murashu Archive). The traditional count gives the Persian period far fewer years than the academic count, so the band is a schematic bridge: it sets the petition, correctly, in the generations after the return (Return to Zion) on the atlas timeline, not a traditional dating claim. | tradition reconstruction | ★★☆☆☆ |
Referenced by: Elephantine