The Makers and Teachers of Judaism | Page 8

factors in the re-establishment of the Judean
community.
VI. Fortunes of the Jews in Egypt. The narrative in Jeremiah states
definitely that the large proportion of those who had rallied about
Gedaliah after his death found a temporary asylum on the eastern

borders of Egypt. Here they were beyond the reach of Chaldean armies
and within the territory of the one nation which offered a friendly
asylum to the Jewish refugees. Most of this later group of exiles settled
at the towns of Tahpanhes and Migdol. The latter means tower and is
probably to be identified with an eastern outpost, the chief station on
the great highway which ran along the southeastern shore of the
Mediterranean directly to Palestine and Syria.
The excavations of the Egypt Exploration Fund at Tahpanhes, which
was the Daphnae of Herodotus, has thrown much light upon the home
of this Jewish community. The town was situated in a sandy desert to
the south of a marshy lake. It lay midway between the cultivated delta
on the west and what is now the Suez Canal on the east. Past it ran the
main highway to Palestine. Its founder, Psamtik I, the great-grandfather
of Hophra, had built here a fort to guard the highway. Herodotus states
that he also stationed guards here, and that until late in the Persian
period it was defended by garrisons whose duty was to repel Asiatic
invasions (II, 30). Here the Ionian and Carian mercenaries, who were at
this time the chief defence of the Egyptian king, were given permanent
homes. By virtue of its mixed population and its geographical position,
Tahpanhes was a great meeting place of Eastern and Western
civilization. Here native Egyptians, Greek mercenaries, Phoenician and
Babylonian traders, and Jewish refugees met on common ground and
lived side by side. It corresponded in these respects to the modern Port
Said.
Probably in remembrance of the Jewish colony that once lived here, the
ruins of the fort still bear an Arab name which means The Palace of the
Jew's Daughter. The term palace is not altogether inappropriate, for
apparently the fort was occasionally used as a royal residence. Many
wine-jars, bearing the seals of Psamtik, Hophra, and Amasis, have been
found in the ruins. In the northwestern part of these ruins has been
uncovered a great open-air platform of brickwork, referred to in
Jeremiah 43:8-10. It was the place of common meeting found in
connection with every Egyptian palace or private home. When Amasis,
in 564 B.C., came to the throne of Egypt he withdrew the privileges
granted by his predecessors to foreigners. The Greek colonists were
transferred to Naukratis, and Tahpanhes lost most of its former glory.
About this time, if not before, the great majority of the Jewish refugees,

who had settled in these frontier towns, probably returned to Palestine
to find homes in its partially depopulated towns.
Ezekiel from distant Babylon appears to have regarded the Jews in
Egypt with considerable hope (Ezek. 29:21). But Jeremiah, who knew
them better, was keenly alive to their faults. In their despair and rage
many of them evidently rejected the teachings of the prophets and
became devotees of the Aramean goddess, the Queen of Heaven,
mentioned in the recently discovered Aramean inscription of Zakar,
king of Hazrak (cf. Section LXV:vii). Jeremiah's closing words to them,
therefore, are denunciations and predictions that they should suffer
even in the land of Egypt, at the hand of Nebuchadrezzar, the same fate
that had overtaken their fellow-countrymen at Jerusalem. Both
Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Ezek. 30) predicted that Nebuchadrezzar would
invade and conquer Egypt. In 568 B.C. his army actually did appear on
the borders of Egypt; but how far he succeeded in conquering the land
is unknown. The complete conquest of Egypt certainly did not come
until the Persian period under the leadership of the cruel Cambyses.
VII. The Jewish Colony at Elephantine. Jeremiah and Ezekiel also refer
to the Jewish colonists at Memphis and at Pathros, which is the biblical
designation of upper Egypt. Many of the colonists who had settled
there had doubtless fled before the conquests of Jerusalem. The
presence of a great number of Jews in Egypt at a later period indicates
that even at this early date more exiles were probably to be found in
Egypt than in Babylon. Recent discoveries on the island of Elephantine
in the upper Nile, opposite the modern Assuan, have thrown new light
upon the life of these Jewish colonists. These records consist (1) of a
series of beautifully preserved legal documents written in Aramaic on
papyrus and definitely dated between the years 471 and 411 B.C. They
include contracts between the Jews residing on the island of
Elephantine regarding the transfer of property and other legal
transactions. They contain many familiar Jewish names, such as