Part 2

The number of Jews in Egypt, and their familiarity with Greek, led to various Greek translations of books of the Hebrew Scriptures.[30] These, in popular rather than literary style, were probably used by proselytes, and followed in synagogues where Hebrew was drifting out of use. They were at last compiled, and probably completed by adding all the remaining books which were familiar as religious literature, though not canonical. Thus seems to have grown up the Greek version known as the Septuagint. Its differences from the Hebrew must not all be assigned to caprice, for its sources probably antedate the formal text of the Masorah. It represents to some extent the sources of the final orthodox text. The production of such a body of translation in Egypt is proof of the large demand that must have existed in a population far more familiar with Greek than with Hebrew.

The next chapter of the Jewish history in Egypt opens out a wide view. The troubles in Palestine caused by the Hellenistic party seizing on the Temple, and the persecutions by Antiochus, had driven large numbers of Jews to settle in the Delta of Egypt; in fact, as later references seem to show, the Eastern Delta was largely occupied by Jews. It was the Hyksos occupation repeated, only in this case the settlement was probably not that of pastoral nomads, but of agriculturalists and traders. The extent of the settlement is indicated by the need for a national centre of worship on a large scale. At first Jerusalem would of course be entirely the focus of religion; but when the Temple fell into the hands of the Hellenizing party, and the High-Priesthood became entirely the prey of violence and bribery, it was more and more difficult to regard the Holy City as a religious home. This severance, and the distance across a long desert journey, would lead to an entire estrangement, and the practical cessation of all Temple worship. The loss of a religious centre, and the presence of an heir of the High-Priesthood, driven out of Jerusalem by the crimes of his relatives, would at last lead to the rise of a new national centre in the midst of the faithful who were thus living in exile.[31] There must have been a large support for the project before Oniah would venture to start so great an enterprise. The vast amount of work that was done in constructing the new city shows that there was a large and wealthy population involved. The letter of application for the site, and the reply granted by Ptolemy VII, seem quite in accord with the times, and there is no reason to suppose that this title-deed of occupation would be lost to sight, and then re-invented.

The site having been granted, of a deserted city, with ruins of an Egyptian palace of Rameses III, and a massive fortification wall of the Hyksos period, there was abundant material for constructing the new city. A large area was laid out beyond the wall of the old city, deliberately modelled upon the plan of Jerusalem and the temple hill. So close is the copy that Professor Dickie in his study of Jerusalem could combine the plans to help in restoring the detail of Jerusalem. The old Egyptian site was adopted as equivalent to the town of Jerusalem, and the new hill was constructed to copy the Temple, and continued northward to imitate Bezetha, leaving a deep gap representing the Tyropœan valley. To throw up these great artificial hills, to face the temple hill with stone walling, up to 100 feet high, to lay out the new city and the fortifications covering six acres, must have needed a large body of supporters, and is the strongest evidence of the numbers and status of the Jews in this district, about twenty-eight miles north of Memphis.

The status of the Jewish settlers in Egypt was influential. Oniah, the heir of the High-Priesthood, was associated with Dositheos, another Jew, as generals of the whole army of Ptolemy VII.[32] He later supported the widowed queen against the attacks of Ptolemy Physcon.[32] He lived at Alexandria, and seems to have been powerful in the court. We also read of an adventurous Jew named Yosef,[33] who outbid all the tax farmers and obtained great power, which was extortionately used in the Ptolemaic province of Palestine. Under Ptolemy VII also we find the Jews of Athribis,[34] the central city of the Delta, dedicating a synagogue. The spread of Jewish settlement was far beyond the city of Oniah, as in Caesar’s time the march of troops from Pelusium to Alexandria was dependent on the goodwill of the Jews of Onion.[35] The road between those cities is more than fifty miles north of the city of Oniah, and it seems therefore that the settlement which was in allegiance to that city must have extended over most of the eastern side of the Delta. As the Jews were already sharing Alexandria on equal terms with the Greeks, they must have pretty well absorbed the management of the Delta. It is in this connection that we must view the statement that they had “entire custody of the Nile on all occasions.”[36] Probably as holding mortgages on interest in much of the land of the Delta, they organized a management of the inundation to ensure the solvency of their securities. The modern Debt Control taking over the management of the Irrigation Department is the parallel to the Jewish custody of the Nile.

There was also another and entirely different side of Jewish life in Egypt. In Josephus we read a long account of the Essenes,[37] to which sect this Pharisee of the High-Priestly family had devoted himself in his youth. This account of the Ascetics of Palestine so closely accords with the account that the Alexandrian Jew Philo gives of the Therapeutae in Egypt[38] that they seem to be identical. This spread of asceticism appears to have been started by the Buddhist mission from India. It was entirely foreign to the Western ideals, yet it took root quickly after Asoka’s mission. Indian figures are found of this period at Memphis, and a multitude of modelled heads of foreigners also found there,[17] can only be paralleled by the modelled heads of foreigners made now for a Buddhist festival in Tibet, and thrown away as soon as the ceremony is over. The influence which thus came into Egypt with the Indians of the Persian occupation is found in working order by 340 B.C., and it was probably strengthened and organized by the Buddhist mission in 260 B.C., and so grew until we meet with the full description of long-established communities in the pages of Philo and Josephus. These bodies were apparently composed of philosophical Jews and proselytes largely influenced by the Alexandrine mixture of Oriental beliefs with Greek theorizing.

Though we are reviewing the status of the Jews, that must include their intellectual as well as social position. The Alexandrian school of thought, as we have it in the Hermetic books[39] and in Philo, was a new development in the world, freely reasoning on the nature of God and of man, starting from various beliefs which were chosen for their prominence and compatibility, and coming to conclusions which are curiously similar to some modern thought. These ideas are the ground for various dogmas which naturally grew up from it in the development of that Jewish sect of Christianity.

We turn from these recluses back to the busy world of the Roman age, when troops for Caesar at Alexandria were collected by his General Mithradates, but stuck at Askelon, hindered by the desert and the Delta.[40] Antipater, a Jewish general with 3,000 Jewish troops, joined him, organized the desert transport with the Arabs, and then forced the fortress of Pelusium. On entering Egypt Antipater brought over the Jews of the Delta to the Caesarian cause, and so opened the way across to Alexandria, and this induced the Memphite Jews also to join Caesar. This service was handsomely acknowledged by Caesar.

Augustus rewarded the fidelity of the Alexandrian Jews by giving them a renewal of all the rights and privileges of equality with the Greeks,[41] which they had in the original charter of Alexander. They had an ethnarch and a council, or a president and parliament, of their own; but the Alexandrian Greeks by their opposition to Augustus lost their right to a senate.

Trouble began with the insane Caligula,[42] who tried to force the worship of his own statues in every place. The Jewish refusal of this demand cost them the withdrawal of all rights of citizenship.[43] The Greeks then thought it an opportunity for a pogrom to revenge their subordination under Augustus.[43] On the accession of Claudius the Jews started a riot to avenge themselves on the Greeks.[44] The influence of Agrippa, which had checked the persecution of the Jews before, shielded them again at Rome. Claudius therefore sent a decree,[45] reciting the equality of the Jews and Greeks in Alexandria from its foundation, and the renewal of the rights by Augustus. Another more general decree was published in the Empire, honouring the fidelity of the Jews to the Romans, and declaring that they were in all countries to keep their ancient customs without hindrance: “And I do charge them also to use this my kindness to them with moderation, and not to show a contempt of the superstitious observances of other nations, but to keep their own laws only.” By the end of his reign, however, Claudius ejected all Jews from Rome.[46] Under Nero there was an attempt of Egyptian Jews to liberate Jerusalem.[47] That failing, there was a renewed riot in the theatre at Alexandria between Jews and Greeks, ending in calling in the legions to plunder the Jewish quarter; in hard fight and massacre after it 50,000 are said to have been killed.[48] This seems to have broken the Jewish hold on the capital, and we do not hear of any more turmoil with the Jews in Alexandria.

The great war in Palestine and destruction of Jerusalem immediately after Nero’s reign put an end to Jewish aspirations for a long time. At last a general conspiracy broke out when Trajan was engaged in Parthia, and the Jews in Cyrene, Egypt, Cyprus, Palestine and Mesopotamia broke out in revolt and massacre.[49] Nearly half a million Greeks were slaughtered in Cyrene and Cyprus.[50] In Egypt all Greeks about the country were massacred, or driven into Alexandria for refuge, where they massacred all Jews left in that city. All of this history shows that in numbers and power the Jews were almost the equals of the Greek population, their close organization perhaps making up for lesser numbers. The retaliation by the Roman legions was naturally a full reply to the destruction which had been dealt out to the Greeks. Henceforward there was no united action of the Jews.

The great settlement of Onion, occupying most of the eastern Delta, was depleted at the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The Temple of the new Jerusalem was closed in 71 A.C. by Lupus the Prefect;[51] finally, Paulinus within the next few years stripped the place, drove out the priests, shut the gates, and left the place to decay. This repression was not sheer persecution on the part of the Romans, but was caused by the Zealots, who had made the worst of the Palestine war, escaping to Egypt, and going even as far as Thebes.[52] In the interest of peace it was needful to abolish a religious centre which might have been made a rallying point for later trouble.

Although history scarcely mentions the Jews in Egypt for some centuries, they were by no means expelled. As traders, perhaps as cultivators, they kept a place in the country. A surprise has come in the last few weeks by the discovery at Oxyrhynkhos, in Middle Egypt, of fragments of four papyri written in Hebrew, as early as the third century. These are thus the oldest Hebrew writings known, apart from stone inscriptions. The age of them is given by another papyrus found with them dated under Severus, 193-211 A.C. One Hebrew writing is on part of a Greek document, which by the hand is probably of the third century. The style of the Hebrew will quite agree to this, as it is closely like the synagogue inscriptions of the first century, as pointed out by Professor Hirschfeld, who has examined these papyri and made a preliminary transcript. With these letters are scraps of a liturgical work on parchment with minute writing. Two of the papyri appear to be dirges, one on the destruction of the Temple. Another papyrus has Jewish names, Joel, Nehemiah, and others.

Though the Jewish half of Alexandria had been severely, if not altogether, reduced in the great rebellion under Trajan, there had been a large return of those who were attracted by the powerful centre of commerce and activity. Once more a pogrom broke out, from the fanatical Cyril in 415, who expelled the Jews, while the mob sacked the Jewish quarter.[53] Yet they returned, as, a couple of centuries later, at the conquest by Islam the Jews were expressly allowed to remain, according to the articles of capitulation.[54] During the rule of Islam the position of the Jew has fluctuated like that of the Christian. Restrictive laws have sometimes been passed, as that of El Hakim, ordering Jews to wear bells or to carry a wooden calf,[55] or the later restriction to wearing yellow turbans.[56] Yet Jews have risen to high power, as the slave-dealer who became supreme in the childhood of Ma’add about 1040, and set Sadaka, a renegade Jew, as vizier in 1044.[57] Though in recent times the Oriental Jew has little hold in Egypt, the European Jew has been a moving force in finance and enterprise.

The general conclusion appears that Egypt from its position and its fertility has always attracted the Jew. It has had therefore a notable influence on the mental attitude, especially in the Alexandrian school of the Wisdom literature and Philo. The status of the Jewish population has been fully equal to that of the other important races, native and Greek, especially in the great Jewish occupation under the Ptolemies, which was perhaps the age of the greatest political power in Jewish history.

REFERENCES IN TEXT

[1] Petrie, _History_, i, Fig. 6.

[2] Petrie, _Scarabs_, xix; _Egypt and Israel_, Fig. 1.

[3] Clay, _Empire of the Amorites_.

[4] Petrie, _Egypt and Israel_, Figs. 2, 5.

[5] Petrie, _Scarabs_, xv, A.C.

[6] Petrie, _History_, i, Apepa 1.

[7] _History_, i, Khyan.

[8] Hastings, _Dict. Bib._, _Abrekh_.

[9] Petrie, _Six Temples_, 28.

[10] To appear in _Herakleopolis_.

[11] Ex. v. 14.

[12] _Egypt and Israel_, 68.

[13] Petrie, _Tanis_, 11; _Defenneh_, 48-53.

[14] Jer. xliv. 1.

[15] Jer. xliv. 30.

[16] Petrie, _Naukratis_, 7.

[17] Petrie, _Memphis_, 1, xxxvi-xl.

[18] Hoonacker, _Une Communauté Judéo-Araméenne_.

[19] Petrie, _Gizeh and Rifeh_, 42.

[20] Hoonacker, 39.

[21] To appear in _Oxyrhynkhos_.

[22] Josephus, _Wars_, II, xviii, 7.

[23] _Wars_, II, xviii, 8.

[24] _Wars_, II, xviii, 7.

[25] Josephus, from Strabo, _Antiq._, XIV, vii, 2.

[26] Mahaffy, _History of Egypt_, 92.

[27] Mahaffy, 93.

[28] Mahaffy, 192.

[29] Mahaffy, 145.

[30] Thackeray, St. J., _The Septuagint and Jewish Worship_, 11-13.

[31] Petrie, _Egypt and Israel_, 98-101.

[32] Josephus, _Cont. Apion_, ii, 5.

[33] _Antiq._, XII, iv.

[34] Mahaffy, 192-3.

[35] _Wars_, I, ix, 4.

[36] _Cont. Apion_, ii, 5, end.

[37] _Wars_, II, viii.

[38] Petrie, _Personal Religion in Egypt_, 63.

[39] _Pers. Relig._, 38.

[40] _Antiq._, XIV, viii.

[41] Milne, _History of Egypt_, 16.

[42] _Antiq._, XVIII, viii.

[43] Milne, 29, 30.

[44] Milne, 31, 32.

[45] _Antiq._, XIX, v. 2, 3.

[46] Acts xviii. 1.

[47] Milne, 35.

[48] _Wars_, II, xviii, 8.

[49] Milne, 52.

[50] Dion Cassius, Trajan, end.

[51] _Wars_, VII, x, 4.

[52] _Wars_, VII, x, 1.

[53] Milne, 98-9.

[54] Stanley Lane-Poole, _History of Egypt_, 11.

[55] Lane-Poole, 127.

[56] Lane-Poole, 301.

[57] Lane-Poole, 137.

APPENDIX

ANCIENT HEBREW PAPYRI

PROVISIONAL TRANSLATION BY DR. H. HIRSCHFELD

FRAGMENT A

LINE

1. (relic of selah [?]).

2. Wells ... hewn ...

3. To lead ... to this ...

4. They rejoice ... they decay ...

5. In the light, or (with ח added) the path ...

6. Of the Temple ... He has put to shame ...

7. They trembled, languished, turned to Thee ...

8. With glee and holy convocation ...

9. In the assembly of holy myriads ...

10. When mountain peaks frowned (see Psalm lxviii. 16-17) ...

11. Myrrh and cinnamon ...

12. I am inundated with tribulation ...

13. ...

14. Kings ...

15. Engraved.

16. Remember and ...

17. ?

(_Probably a lament on the destruction of the Temple._)

FRAGMENT B

1. ?

2. surrounding (?)

3. ?

4. path ?

5.

6. upon the earth (land ?).

FRAGMENT C

1. ? ?

2. ?

3. ?

4. ... males ...

5. ... and avenge the sanctuary ...

6. Thou hast ... ? us a kingdom of priests ...

7. ... a kingdom ... ?

FRAGMENT D

1 to 5. illegible and untranslatable.

6. Joel ... ?

7. And Nehemiah. Nahor ... ? in judgement (?).

8 to 10. illegible ...

* * * * *

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