Request about the Rebuilding of the Elephantine Temple

This is the most historically significant text in the Elephantine archive. Its date is November 25, 407 BCE. The Jews of Elephantine ask the Persian governor of Judah to recommend (presumably to the Persian authorities in Egypt) that the Jewish temple in Elephantine, which was destroyed three years earlier, in 410 BCE, at the instigation of the Khnum priests and Vidranga, be rebuilt and that sacrifices be resumed. They add that, although the perpetrators were punished, a previous request went unanswered, and they have been in mourning ever since. A second draft of this letter, with the style improved, was found with this one, reflecting the Jews’ sense of the magnitude of this request. Another document indicates that the Persian governor in Judah supported the request, as did a son of the Persian governor in Samaria to whom a similar request had been sent, although they limited their support for the resumption of sacrifices to incense and grain offerings, excluding animal sacrifices, which the Elephantine Jews had requested. Perhaps they wished to reserve animal sacrifice (the most important type of sacrifice) to the Temple in Jerusalem. It is not known whether the Elephantine temple was in fact rebuilt.