Bible Synapse
Elephantine Passover letter
document · 419/418 BC · Persian period · also called Passover Papyrus, TAD A4.1, Cowley 21
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- Date
- 419/418 BC (the letter, dated in the 5th year of Darius II)
- Found
- Elephantine Island, Aswan, Egypt, 1907. Found in 1907 in the Berlin museums’ excavations at Elephantine directed by Otto Rubensohn, and entered in the Berlin collection as an excavation find. It belongs to the archive of Yedaniah, to whom it is addressed.
- Now
- Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin (P. 13464)
- Passages
- Exodus 12:14–20, Leviticus 23:5–8
What it is
A damaged papyrus letter in Aramaic from a man named Hananiah to Yedaniah and his colleagues of the Jewish garrison at Elephantine, dated in the fifth year of Darius II. The words that survive mention a message from the king to Arsames, the Persian satrap of Egypt, the 15th to the 21st days of Nisan, purity, leaven, and things to be sealed up in rooms. In its usual restoration the letter gives instructions for keeping the festival of Unleavened Bread.
How it connects to the Bible
In its usual restoration, the letter’s instructions follow the festival laws of Exodus 12 and Leviticus 23, where “ye shall eat unleavened bread” from the fourteenth day of the first month to the twenty-first. Read that way, it shows a Jewish community far from Jerusalem being told how to keep the feast under Persian rule, around the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.
What scholars debate
The papyrus is broken and much of its usual reading is restored; the word ‘Passover’ itself does not survive, and some scholars think the letter is chiefly about a change to the calendar.