Elephantine

Notice, it will be found, has been taken even of the stela of Menepta, recently disinterred by Professor Petrie, on which the name of the Israelites is engraved.

At Elephantine I found, a short time since, on a granite boulder, an inscription of Khufu-Anka, whose sarcophagus of red granite is one of the most beautiful objects in the Giza Museum, which carries back the history of the island to the age of the pyramid builders of the fourth dynasty.

The boulder was subsequently concealed under the southern side of the city wall, and as fragments of inscribed papyrus coeval with the sixth dynasty have been discovered in the immediate neighborhood, on one of which mention is made of this domain of Pepi II, it would seem that the town of Elephantine must have been founded between the period of the fourth dynasty and that of the sixth.

Manetho is therefore justified in making the fifth and sixth dynasties of Elephantine origin.

It is in Babylonia, however, that the most startling discoveries have been made.

At Tello, M. de Sarzac has found a library of more than 30,000 tablets, all neatly arranged, piled in order one on the other, and belonging to the age of Judea, B.C. 2700.

Even a colony of Persians sent thither by Cambyses could not bear the noise of the falls and went forth to seek a quieter situation.

The first cataract is a kind of sloping and sinuous passage six and a quarter miles in length, descending from the island of Philae to the port of Aswan.

A considerable part of his time was taken up in war, in the east against the Libyans in the regions of the oasis, in the Nile valley to the south of Aswan against the Nubians, on the Isthmus of Suez and in the Syenatic Peninsula against the Bedouin, frequently also in a civil war against some ambitious noble or some turbulent member of his own family.

He traveled frequently from south to north and from north to south, leaving in every possible place marked traces of his visits, on the rocks of Elephantine and of the first cataract, on those of Sylsillus or of El Kab, and he appeared to his vassals as Tumu himself arisen among them to repress injustice and disorder.

He restored or enlarged the monuments, regulated equitably the assessment of taxes and charges, settled or dismissed the lawsuits between one town and another concerning the appropriation of the water or the possession of certain territories, distributed fiefs which had fallen vacant among his faithful servants, and granted pensions to be paid out of the royal revenues.

At length he re-entered Memphis, or one of his usual residences, where fresh labors awaited him.

If the building was to be of brick, the bricks were made on the spot, in the plain at the foot of the hills.

If it was to be a limestone structure, the neighboring parts of the plateau furnished the rough material in abundance.

For the construction of chambers and for casing walls, the rose granite of Elephantine and the limestone of Troyu were commonly employed, but they were spared the labor of procuring these specially for the occasion.

The city of the White Wall had always at hand a supply of them in its stores, and they might be drawn upon freely for public buildings, and consequently for the royal tomb.

This is where we were with a, a trusted friend there, Misgana.

And there's a documented tradition that the Ark of the Covenant went to Elephantine Island in six forty-two BC and then to Tana Kirkos Island at Lake Tana in Egypt.

This is, this is documented in Second Chronicles thirty-five, really, and I won't get into all that here other than from there it went to Axum and is presently at St. Mary's Zion Church.

And because of all this, uh, and they believe that their, their-- this is their commitment to present this to the Messiah when he rules on Mount Zion.

And there's Zephaniah three:ten, a whole chapter in Isaiah that deals with that presentation.

But the main point is what we did is we actually retraced those steps, and we went to the Elephantine Island, which was the capital of Egypt in the days that the Levites fled for refuge under Pharaoh Necho, who was Pharaoh of Egypt, but he actually was Ethiopian.

It was the fortified capital back then.

And we were actually there.

I don't know if you've ever kind of looked into the relationship between diaspora Jews in the times of the Second Besamikdash, because, you know, there were big Jewish communities outside of Israel.

And when you read the letters that went back and forth between the communities, it's really quite astonishing and interesting because we think of this as something brand new in the last, you know, 80 years, but this existed before, right? The base of Migdash stood, the Jews outside of Israel paid a tax, you know, and you see letters going back and forth and people in Elephantine and other parts of Egypt and other parts of the Middle East writing and asking a lot of interesting questions about the relationship between the Jews in the It's not brand new, and it's a relationship that is extremely important.

And we have to prioritize it, I think, in many ways.

And cultural exchanges are always good.

The result was remarkable uniformity.

Documents from Elephantine in Egypt and Bactria in Afghanistan, over 2,000 miles apart, are written in precisely the same way.

The Persians standardized the paperwork

across the whole empire.

absolutely.

I think it was about 20 to 25 years ago, I was working, I was on the way to a client and I was listening to NPR and they had an archeologist on and they were discussing the Jewish temple on Elephantine Island.

that existed in the time, circa the rough timeframe of the prophet Isaiah and Jeremiah.

And I thought, this is interesting.

Terms and conditions apply.

Jewish temples operating in Alexandria, but also a Jewish presence dating all the way back to the Persian period on the Elephantine Island.

This would also include the various religious and philosophical schools like Hermetism, Gnosticism, along with the various mystical and straightforwardly philosophical schools.

We shouldn't forget this was also the land of Philo of Alexandria, along with people like Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism.