The Status of the Jews in Egypt / The Fifth Arthur Davis Memorial Lecture

by W. M. Flinders Petrie

The great change of status took place when the Hyksos were expelled, and any remnant of those tribes had to become serfs if they were tolerated at all. It seems highly probable that at this time a part of the Israelites were swept back into Palestine with the retreating waves of defeated Hyksos. It is not only probable, but it is indicated by the defeat of “people of Israel” in Palestine by Merneptah (recorded on his triumphal stele)[9], at a time when the Israelites whom we know of seem to have still been in Egypt. Of the latter portion—with whom we are here concerned—we have only accounts of their serfdom; yet a stray light of a different kind has lately shown that other positions were open to them. On a large family tablet of a chief of cavalry under Rameses II, that is during the age of oppression, the Egyptians are shown worshipping the various gods of the country. The surprise comes where the servants have put their names on the blank edges of the tablet, headed by the “scribe engraver” called Yehu-naam or “Yehu-speaks”;[10] just the converse order of the most familiar phrase, “Thus saith the Lord.” This seems unmistakably to refer to a worshipper of Yehu or Yahveh, and hence an Israelite. Though this is only a single name, it implies a great deal. It shows that an Israelite during the oppression was not only an unskilled labourer, but might be one of the most highly skilled artisans, understanding hieroglyphics, and an artist able to draw and engrave all the figures of the gods. This puts an especial point on the commandment against making graven images, if Israelites were actually engaged in that trade. Further, this man was employed as far south as the Fayum, and thus a hundred miles from the tolerated “Jewry” of the Wady Tumilat. The freedom which the Israelites undoubtedly had under the Hyksos makes it likely that many may have taken up different crafts, and have been scattered about in the country as demand and opportunity led them.

Those who remained in a servile position were not in the least in the condition of being separately bought and sold like cattle, as in American slavery. They were organized in regular families, with their scribes or “officers” of themselves, under the “commanders of tribute” of the Egyptians.[11] In short, their labour was a sort of tribal tax which they had to render, and for which their own headmen were responsible. How and when the individual worked was the affair of his own family and clan, and could not be dictated by the Egyptian so long as the total output was maintained. This is an important part of the status of labour, whether its system is autonomous or is an individual slavery. It seems that the status was that of a tribe heavily taxed for labour, but left to follow its own arrangements. This could only be carried out where there was a solid block of the Israelite population, as in the land of Goshen, the Wady Tumilat. It does not therefore imply any special tax or disability upon those who—like the sculptor just named—had entered on various trades and work scattered in the country. Probably they were gradually lost to sight in mixture with the general population.

During the age of the Judges there was a continuous decadence in Egypt, so that on both sides it is improbable that trade led to any Jewish settlements. The rise of the Jewish kingdom, and the regular horse trade established by Solomon, together with his marriage to the royal family of Tanis, Zoan, and consequent connection with the royal family Bubastis,[12] must have led to some mercantile establishments. Still greater familiarity with Egypt came during the increasing troubles of the close of the Jewish kingdom. About seventy years before the fall of Jerusalem the new Saite King, Psamtek, had established a great frontier fort on the road to Palestine, at Tahpanhes; this was a settlement of Greek troops, and hence open to foreign residents.[13] Whenever there was trouble in Judæa, especially from Assyria, this fortress would be the natural asylum of any refugees, and Greek and Jew first mixed here and learned each other’s ways. The results of this mixture are evident in the reference to five cities speaking the language of Canaan, and swearing by the Lord of Hosts, and in the address of Jeremiah to the Jews which dwelt in the land of Egypt, which dwell at Migdol, the desert frontier, and at Tahpanhes, the Delta frontier, and at Noph, Memphis, and in the country of Pathros, Upper Egypt,[14] calling their attention to the desolation of Jerusalem and exhorting them therefore to give up burning incense to other gods in the land of Egypt, where they had gone to dwell already, more than ten years before the fall of Jerusalem. Their reply that they had prospered when they sacrificed to the queen of heaven was met by the prophecy that Pharaoh-Hophra should be given into the hand of his enemies and into the hand of them that seek his life.[15] The meaning of this lay in the politics of Egypt. Hophra was of the party that favoured Greeks and foreigners; but there was a strong Nationalist party of Egyptians who would exclude foreigners, and they sought the life of Hophra, and finally dethroned and murdered him. This led to the exclusive policy which restricted foreign residence under Amasis. This declaration was therefore a warning against trusting to the continuance of the open policy, under which Egypt had been a refuge to the Jews. The fugitive remnant of the royal family and court had found what seemed a safe refuge at Tahpanhes, where the palace-fort had been assigned to them in the Greek camp by Hophra. There Jeremiah had buried stones in the outside platform before the entry of Pharaoh’s house, and the fort is still called “The palace of the Jew’s daughter.” Their patron, however, was to fall, and the open policy with him, and Amasis was—twenty years later—to revive the Nationalist control. He closed down all the Greek settlements and garrisons, only leaving one treaty-port to Greek trade—that of Naukratis;[16] and they paid for this Nationalist movement by falling into the power of Persia in the next generation.

The Persian conquest in 525 B.C. threw open the whole country to influences from all quarters. The series of heads of foreigners found at Memphis shows how the Babylonian traders of the old Sumerian race flocked in, with Indians, Kurds, and a multitude of Scythian Cossacks, besides the ruling race of Persia itself.[17] The picture of this age of Jewish settlement has been preserved in the papyri of Elephantine;[18] and what took place there was assuredly exceeded by the less remote settlements in the rest of Egypt. We find mention of a Jew living at Abydos, which was not a centre of trade. Not only was there a Jewish colony at the Cataract, but one large and prosperous enough to build a temple to Yaho. This temple was older than the Persian invasion, and such a footing is unlikely to have been a new concession by the Nationalists; it probably dates from the time of Hophra’s foreign policy before 570.

The description of the parts which were destroyed later shows that there were five stone doorways, implying that the walls were of brick, like most buildings in Egypt. There were stone columns, bronze fittings to the doors, and a roof of cedar. The vessels of the temple service were of gold and silver. The restorations that have been proposed are rather too extensive for a temple placed in an existing town. Probably, there was a continuous high wall around, a large entrance gate opening on an outer court, from that another gate leading to an inner court, at the back of which was the colonnade of the temple front; the other three doorways named would be that of the temple and those leading to the store-rooms and priests’ dwellings. Though neither the place nor the size of community would allow of a great building, it is seen that the quality of the structure implies that the Jewish residents were on a level with the Egyptians.

Though this temple was destroyed in 411 B.C. by the enmity of the Egyptian priests of Khnum, and the cupidity of the Persian governor Widarnag, yet the parties were so nearly equal that before 408 the governor and all his accomplices had perished by violence, and, in revenge, by 405 Yedeniyeh bar Gamariyeh, a principal Jew of Elephantine, had to flee to Thebes, where he was killed.

Regarding the relations of Egyptians to Jews, it is notable that proselytes were not uncommon. Ashor, an Egyptian, married a Jewess, and took the name of Nathan; Hoshea was a son of an Egyptian, Pedu-khnum; Hadadnuri the Babylonian had a son named Yathom, and grandson Melkiel.

Some matters of status which have been attributed to Babylonian influence may equally well—and more probably—be simple acceptance of the Egyptian laws. In the census for payment of the temple tax of two shekels—presumably from householders—at least one in eight are women, apparently holding independent property. Since in Egypt inherited property was held by women rather than by men, this was according to native law. In marriage contracts either party could stand up in the congregation and denounce the marriage at any time, on payment of a fixed penalty. This was likewise the case in Christian Coptic marriages, as stated by a contract.[19] Hence it must be regarded as the Egyptian law, to which the Jews conformed by necessity or habit.

Thus it appears that the status of the Jewish colonies in Egypt was at least equal to that of any other foreigners, and that they had assimilated native custom and law. The ideas of these settlers at the Cataract, and probably of those elsewhere, were derived from the habits of thought of the monarchy, quite apart from the Babylonian particularism. There was no objection to taking an oath by the goddess of the Cataract, for a legal declaration, like any Egyptian. This is akin to the later Egyptian Judaism, which sought reconciliation with Gentile principles, as in the Alexandrian school of Philo, and was entirely opposed to the bitterly anti-Gentile school which was developed in the Captivity.

It is evident that there was no hesitation in establishing temple worship at the Cataract, and probably also in the other cities that “called on the name of Yahveh,” as a substitute for the destroyed temple of Jerusalem. This is in accord with the establishing of the temple by Oniah some three centuries later. There was not yet the dogma that no temple could be legitimate outside of Jerusalem: that view seems to have been a development of the Babylonian party, probably in connection with their rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem on the Return from Captivity. A rival temple would probably have been illegitimate at any time; but if the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed, or in the heretical hands of the Hellenic party, then it was looked on as more important to maintain the worship, rather than to abandon it because its true centre was unattainable. This was in accord with Western Judaism, which would subordinate the letter of the law to keeping the spirit of it; in contrast to Babylonian Judaism, which by concentrating on the letter of the law forgot the more important value of it, and thus “tithed mint, anise and cummin, and omitted the weightier matters of the law.”