Destruction of the Jewish temple by the priests of Khnum, violence

At the southern tip of Egypt, facing Assouan, the island of Elephantine housed under Persian rule a garrison of Judean soldiers established there since at least the 6th century BCE. This community had its own temple, dedicated to YHW, where incense and sacrifices were offered — an institution with no equivalent anywhere outside of Jerusalem.

The sanctuary was destroyed by the priests of the ram-god Khnoum, whose temple neighbored it, with the complicity of the Persian commander Vidranga. The colony's archives, written in Aramaic on papyrus and discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, preserve the letter by which the community's leader, Yedaniah, three years later sought authorization to rebuild the temple: it is addressed to Bagohi, governor of Judah, and to the sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria, a sign that the community knew itself to be attached to both.

These papyri are the oldest archival record of a Jewish community outside the Land of Israel: marriage contracts, loans, deeds of sale, official correspondence. They speak of the ordinary life of a garrison as much as of the destruction of its sanctuary, whose fate — whether it was ever rebuilt — remains unknown.