Elephantine in Context

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The research project aims at an investigation oft the Judean military garrison on the Nile island of Elephantine in the context of Persian Period Egypt (5th-4th century B.C.E). The investigation breaks with the scholarly confines that tend to focus solely on the group of the Judeans at Elephantine and wants to take into account the historical and social interaction of this group with the indigenous Egyptian population, the ruling Persian elite and the other ethnicities stationed on the facing island of Syene. Already the Aramaic papyri and ostraca mention these groups. Additionally we have the text themselves. Excavations under the auspices of the Berlin Museum at the beginning of the 20th century have not only unearthed Aramaic papyri but also Demotic and Egyptian-Hieratic texts. This evidence as well as the interaction mentioned in the papyri prompts the question of Elephantine in Context. The evidence mentioned above has thus far been neglected by scholarship and it can only be rendered accessible by interdisciplinary research. Here we are thinking of the contribution of Egyptology that assumes for quite some time now a multicultural Egyptian society during the Persian and Hellenistic-Roman period. Biblical scholarship in contrast has not yet accepted this view. Mainly because the material from Elephantine is either regarded as a marginal phenomenon or interpreted along the lines proposed by Bezalel Porten in 1968 in light of a biblical view of a 'Judaism' during the Second (Jerusalem) Temple period. In this perspective the remaining ethnicities are seen as 'the other' and the historical and social contacts are described as 'pagan contacts'. In the research project the topic of Elephantine in Context will be approached from two directions. Disseminated into two partial projects (Teilprojekt) the texts will be investigated that are either multi-culturally received (TP1 on the Achiqar composition) or contain concrete evidence for internal and external contacts (TP 2 on letters and contracts). Both projects are supplemented by a sub-project that will analyse the textual evidence from a sociological perspective and investigate the possibility of applying recent theories from historical sociology to the textual corpus. The project is headed by Bernd Schipper (Berlin) a specialist in biblical and Egyptian wisdom literature who, at the same time, will belabour TP1. Reinhard Kratz (Göttingen, TP2) and Bob Becking (Utrecht) two leading authorities of international research on Elephantine will also be part of the research team. Additionally the project is connected to the scientific inspection of the Demotic, Hieratic and Aramaic papyri from Elephantine currently done by the Egyptological Museum of Berlin under the guidance of Verena Lepper.