The papyri report a contemporary incident which occurred about a hundred years after Cambyses and which illustrates the good relations which existed at that period with the Persians whose generally sympathetic attitude had already been demonstrated by Cyrus in allowing the Jews to return to Judah from captivity in Babylon. In the year 410 the Elephantine Temple was destroyed by a band of Egyptians led by the priests of the temple of the god Khnum on the opposite side of the street. The attack seems to have been the culmination of a long-standing state of friction between the two religious houses which may have been exacerbated by the offence caused to the Egyptians' ram god by the Jews' custom of sacrificing lambs at Passover. In any event, the Jews petitioned the Persians and after much delay the Satrap of Samaria, called Sanballat, who is mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah,(1) gave orders that the Egyptians were to rebuild the temple at their own cost and that the culprits were to be severely punished. The religious authorities in Jerusalem, however, took the opportunity to inform the leaders of the Elephantine community that in future, though they might offer up meal offering and incense in the temple, they were not to make animal sacrifices. It is not clear why this restriction was imposed but three possible explanations have been suggested by Porten: 'the omission was a concession to Egyptian susceptibilities (no more sacrifice of the ram), to Persian susceptibilities (no more profaning of fire), a compromise between the latitudinarian Samaritans and the restrictive Judahites'. (2) Whatever the explanation, the report throws a most interesting light on Jewish communal life in a distant corner of the Diaspora nearly five hundred years before the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus.

When Strabo, the Greek historian and geographer who lived in the first century BC, was writing about Ethiopia he mentioned a colony of Egyptians living on an island far up the Nile who had gone to Meroe 'as exiles from Psammeticus and are called Sembritae, as being foreigners',(3) and were governed by a queen. These sound very much like the former members of the Elephantine garrison mentioned by Herodotus and, if so, it is remarkable that after five hundred years they should still have retained their separate identity as well as their sobriquet. Indeed, one may

(1) 2:10.
(2) op. cit., p. 293.
(3) TheGeography of Strabo, 16, 4, 8.