Bible Synapse

Wadi Daliyeh papyri and Sanballat bulla

document · 4th century BC · Persian period · also called Samaria papyri, Wadi Daliyeh bulla

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Date
4th century BC (the papyri and their seals)
Found
Mugharet Abu Shinjeh, Wadi Daliyeh, West Bank, 1962. Found by Ta‘amireh Bedouin in 1962 in a cave about 14 km north of Jericho; the papyri and sealings were bought from them in 1962–1963 through Frank Moore Cross, and the cave was then excavated in 1963 and 1964. With the papyri lay sealings, coins and the remains of about 205 people.
Now
Rockefeller Archaeological Museum (Israel Antiquities Authority), Jerusalem
Passages
Nehemiah 2:10, Nehemiah 4:1–2, Nehemiah 13:28

What it is

A cache of about 40 Aramaic papyrus fragments, legal documents from Samaria of the 4th century BC, mostly deeds for the sale of slaves, sealed with clay bullae. They belonged to wealthy families of Samaria who fled to the cave, probably after Alexander the Great’s conquest, and died there. One bulla, attached to the remains of a deed for the sale of a vineyard, reads in paleo-Hebrew letters ‘[…]yahu son of [San]ballat, governor of Samaria’.

How it connects to the Bible

Sanballat, Nehemiah’s chief opponent (Nehemiah 2:10; 4:1), is called governor of Samaria in the Elephantine letter of 407 BC. The Wadi Daliyeh bulla, from the following century, links the name Sanballat to the governorship of Samaria again. Frank Moore Cross argued that the office passed down one family in which the name Sanballat recurred.

What scholars debate

Whether there were later governors called Sanballat is debated; some scholars, following Jan Dušek, doubt it and take the bulla’s Sanballat to be Nehemiah’s opponent himself.

Sources

Checked 2026-10-21. All archaeological finds