Elephantine in Context

Kratz, Reinhard GregorBorn 1957; 1987 Dr. theol., 1990 Habilitation at the University of Zürich; since 1995 Professor for Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at the Theological Faculty of the University Göttingen.Schipper, Bernd U.Born 1968; 1999 Dr. theol. at the University of Bonn; 2004 Dr. phil. (Egyptology) at the University of Hamburg; since 2010 Professor for Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at the Faculty of Theology of Humboldt-University of Berlin.

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.