Archaeology Magazine - September/October 2024 - 39

One of the houses archaeologists
unearthed near the temple
appears to have belonged
to Mibtahiah, a woman named
extensively in the papyri. The
documents record that she
inherited a house from her
father, Mahseiah, measuring
13 by 11 cubits, or around 19.5
by 16.5 feet. Before she inherited
the house, the papyri note,
it went unused for a period of
time and partially collapsed,
but was later rebuilt.
A
Ruins of ancient fortifications are evidence of the role Elephantine played in Egypt's defense.
T
he Elephantine papyri included sufficient detail
that, in 1961, Porten was able to produce a sketch
of the temple of Yahu showing its location. The
texts describe it as having bronze doors and a cedar roof,
and as being on a main street near a large Egyptian temple
dedicated to the ram-headed god Khnum, who was revered
for controlling the waters of the Nile. The Judean people lived
mainly in houses across the street from these temples, alongside
their Egyptian neighbors. " They were a tight-knit community,
usually marrying other Judeans and relying on their fellow
Judeans as witnesses in legal situations, " says Porten. " They also
interacted with Egyptians, Achaemenids, and others. "
Decades after Porten made his sketch of the Judean temple,
in the 1990s, a joint team from the Swiss Institute for Architectural
and Archaeological Research on Ancient Egypt and
the German Archaeological Institute discovered the remnants
of a rectangular mudbrick building that they identified as the
temple. They arrived at this conclusion based on similarities
between Porten's sketch and the design and location of the
structure they had uncovered. The temple was surrounded by
an enclosure wall and sat on a platform built atop a natural hill.
Archaeologists identified two levels of flooring, each covered
by a layer of sand, indicating that the temple had been abandoned
twice, which matches descriptions in the papyri. They
also confirmed that some of the houses where Rubensohn
had unearthed papyri in the early twentieth century likely
belonged to Judeans. " This finding was a big surprise, a dream,
something beyond expectation at that time, " says Porten. " It
identified where the individuals named in the papyri lived.
Very rarely do we make archaeological discoveries that indicate
exactly who lived at a particular location. "
archaeology.org
fundamental tenet of
Judaism as laid out in
the Torah is that there
is only one God: Yahweh.
The papyri, however, show
that the Judean community
on Elephantine worshipped
multiple gods. One papyrus
reports that members of the
community gave money to
different deities associated with the temple: Yahu received 12
silver keresh and six shekels, the god 'Asm Bethel received seven
keresh, and the god 'Anath Bethel received 12 keresh. " Yahu
wasn't the only god, but was the main deity, " says Barnea. " We
need to remember that we are not yet talking about Judaism.
That didn't exist until the second century b.c., when the Torah
emerged as a clear set of rules and beliefs that people followed.
This community goes back to before that time. "
When the Judean community was active on Elephantine, in
the sixth and fifth centuries b.c., both Judah and the region to
the north, called Samaria, from which Judah had split around
900 b.c., were home to multiple groups of Yahweh worshippers.
These communities, too, each had minor or accompanying
gods in addition to Yahweh, the most common of which was
a goddess named Asherah, whom scholars identify as Yahweh's
wife. These minor gods differed from place to place, and some
groups added their location to the gods' names. For example, the
names 'Asm Bethel and 'Anath Bethel associate these gods with
the town of Bethel in Judah. Likewise, the name Yahweh Shomron,
found in a ninth-century b.c. inscription discovered in
northeastern Egypt, associates the god with Samaria, the Greek
equivalent of the Hebrew Shomron. " There is no indication of
cult centralization at the time, " says Diana Edelman, a theologian
at the University of Oslo. " That is a later ideology. " Many communities
in Judah and Samaria built temples to Yahweh, ruins
of which have been found in places such as Arad, in the Judean
desert, and Dan, in the hill country of Samaria. " It would make
sense that those who went to Elephantine as mercenaries took
their gods, including Yahweh, with them and built a temple,
because they saw these gods as part of who they were, as part of
their identity, " Edelman says.
39

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Archaeology Magazine - September/October 2024

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