The date of this document is regarded as not admitting of any doubt, as may be gathered by the references to the regnal years of Darius in conjunction with the names of historical personages—Bagohi (Bagoas or Bagoses of Josephus), governor of Judea, Yehoḥanan or John, the high-priest at Jerusalem, and the two sons of Sanaballaṭ,[332] the governor of Samaria in the time of Artaxerxes I. (Longimanus). The ruler of the Persian empire when these documents were written, must therefore have been Darius II. (Nothus), who reigned for 19 years, namely, 424-405 b.c. The 14th year of Darius II.—the date of the destruction of the temple at Yeb—was 410 b.c., and his 17th year—the date when the appeal was sent to Bagohi—corresponds with 407 b.c. This fixes, among others, the date of Yehoḥanan, and Sachau points out as noteworthy that one of his brothers, named Manasseh, was son-in-law of the governor of Samaria, Sanaballaṭ, as related in Nehemiah xiii. 28. Another brother of the high-priest was the one whom he killed in the temple (Jesus). In this record, however, a third brother, Ostan or Ostanes, appears. To all appearance this last bore also another name, to wit, 'Ahani, which would be his true Hebrew appellation. If, however, the Babylonian construction has been followed here, this Ostan or Ostanes would be brother of 'Ahani, a personage of importance in Jerusalem, but not otherwise known. Adopting the rendering given in the translation, however, it is noteworthy that two brothers named Yehoḥanan and 'Ahani are mentioned in 1 Chronicles iii. 24. These, however, were descendants of David, whereas the brothers mentioned in the papyrus must have been descendants of Aaron.
A high Persian official named Uštanu or Uštannu (Ostanu [pg 544] or Ostan) occurs on two Babylonian tablets in the British Museum, and also on one in the possession of Lord Amherst of Hackney. He bears the title “governor of Babylon and across the river,” possibly meaning all the tract west of the Euphrates. This man, however, can hardly at the same time have been governor of Egypt, and the texts in which he is mentioned seem, moreover, to belong to the time of Darius Hystaspis, in which case he lived at a much too early date.
The Egyptians called the island of Elephantine Yeb, and its capital bore the same name as the island. It is transcribed Ab by those who follow the old system of reading Egyptian, so that the present documents seem to support the philological views of the Berlin school. A common ideograph for the name of the island is an elephant with an upturned trunk, showing that Yeb really means “elephant-island,” and that Elephantine is simply the Greek translation of the native name. The temple of Khnum (Khnumba, Khnub), whose priests are referred to in the papyri, was destroyed by Moḥammed Ali in 1822.
The Hebrew divine name is written Yahu, which is apparently the longer form of the biblical Jah, seen in such names as Hezekiah (Assyrian Ḫazaqi-yau), Gemariah or Gemariahu (Jer. xxix. 3; xxxvi. 10, etc.). As is shown on p. [471], this termination was pronounced iāwa by the Babylonian Jews, which raises the question whether the Yahu of these papyri may not have been pronounced Yāwa also.
Dr. L. Belleli, of the Philological Section of the Instituto di Studi Superiori in Florence, doubts the genuineness of the papyri found at Elephantine on account of chronological difficulties. In the case of the documents here translated, however, no such difficulties can be said to exist, and the forger of such things would have to be not only a splendid Aramaic scholar acquainted with the Berlin scheme of transcribing Egyptian, but also a historian and the possessor of an exceedingly lively imagination.
The above description is based upon Eduard Sachau's noteworthy monograph, Drei aramäische Papyrusurkunden aus Elephantine, Berlin, Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1907. The documents in question were discovered by Dr. Otto Rubensohn, and the collection included some papyri still in roll-form, and various fragments. The principal document translated above belonged to the former category, and was successfully unrolled by Herr Ibscher, the keeper of the Royal Museum. The reproduction shows it as a large sheet of papyrus, folded in two, and certain damaged portions, on the left, imply that it was rolled upon itself about six times.
Notes And Additions.
P. [11]. It is needful to state, as has been pointed out to the writer, that “our English translation would make all (the Biblical Creation-story) appear English.” In other words, the test of language is not an unfailing one.