The Persian period has long been considered a dark era in Israel's history. For this reason
research has mainly focused on how it is depicted in the Hebrew Bible. A spectacular discovery
of archaeological relics and epigraphic sources was hence hardly noticed: the military colony
located on the island of Elephantine in the Nile on the border between Egypt and present-day
Sudan. The basic approach of this volume which documents a three-year Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft project is to break with a research tradition focusing on the Judeans
(Jews) mentioned in the Aramaic papyri from Elephantine and instead investigate the military
colony in a broader historical context also documented by Demotic and Egyptian-hieratic
evidence found at Elephantine. The studies presented focus on three main subject areas: society
and administration religion and literature. They show that historically the island of
Elephantine hosted a multicultural society with several interactions between the Egyptians and
the other inhabitants and that it was also an important administrative centre for the Persian
authorities.
