The second ‘documentary clue’ sits calmly in the Brooklyn Museum, New York. It is one of the Elephantine papyri that a certain Anani b. Azariah wrote as an endorsement on a ‘Document of a House’. It has two seals, one of them is the scarab (ring-bezel) of Tutmoses III, an Eighteenth-Dynasty Pharaoh, dating to some 1,000 years before the time of the writing of the Azariah papyrus.21 Why would a member of the Elephantine Community be making use of a seal from the Eighteenth Dynasty, unless he felt some association with the Amenhotep family continuum? A seal that Akhenaten, as a close family descendant of Tutmoses III, might well have had in his possession.
Although the Elephantine Community later had apparently good relations with their distant cousins in Israel and were on corresponding terms, the worship of Yahwe (the Hebrew God) together with Astarte and Ashambethel indicates that theirs was not a reimported version of Mosaic Judaism, but a transmuted version of the original Egyptian-Judaism that had become corrupted by its close proximity to Egyptian paganism.
There is, however, some evidence mitigating against part of this theory, which can be found in the Israel Museum, an enormous complex of buildings standing in twenty-two acres in the heart of Jerusalem. Set on a hillside the Museum stands imperiously gazing out over the panoramic vista of the Israeli Knesset building (Parliament) in front, to the left the Hebrew University and to the right the Monastery of the Cross or Crusader Monastery, standing in the Valley of the Cross. The museum buildings comprise the Bezalel Museum of Fine Arts, the Shrine of the Book (which houses many of the Dead Sea Scrolls), the Rose Art Garden, and the Biblical and Archaeological Museum. In this latter building there are numerous examples of Egyptian objects – small votive offerings from a temple of the Hyksos period, found on the shore north of Haifa at Nahariya, and examples of Egyptian pottery attributed to the early third millennium BCE, found at Tell Eirani and Tell Arad.
However, there is very significant evidence of Egyptian influence, long after the Exodus, in the form of a collection of cult objects that include ‘Astarte’ figurines from the period of the destruction of the First Temple. The goddess Astarte was therefore a stubborn addendum to the worship of one God by the Hebrews long after they entered the Promised Land.
Some additional light can be thrown on the adherence to Astarte by skipping back to Akhenaten’s father, Amenhotep III. The conquests of Syria by Egypt had resulted in the incorporation of certain Syrian gods into the Egyptian pantheon. One of these was ‘Ishtar’ a goddess of life and good health. Ishtar has been equated with the goddess Astarte, and the fondness of Amenhotep III for this goddess could explain the continued affinity of the Elephantine sect to this deity. In his last years of illness, when he was in the thirty-sixth-year of his reign, Amenhotep III made an urgent request to his father-in-law, Prince Tusratta of Mitanni, to send him a statue of ‘Ishtar of Nineveh’.22
It may seem dichotomous to contemplate a belief in one God with the continued adherence to previous gods. This would not be inconsistent with the thinking of the Egyptian mind at the time. To them, everything was seen as a continuing process of inter-related entities and when change was envisaged it could be seen as not necessarily invalidating, or even conflicting, with previous beliefs. Rather like the twitching of a chicken’s legs after its head is cut off, it would be too much to expect that a mental clean sweep could be made – suddenly forgetting all previous knowledge, superstitions and beliefs.
It was not inconsistent therefore, that gods such as Astarte, a particular favourite of the Amenhotep faction, could survive alongside monotheism. A degree of backsliding was inevitable, and there are numerous examples subsequent to the Exodus. The making of an idolatrous Golden Calf, whilst the Hebrews waited in the desert for Moses to bring down the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai, was a reflex action understandable for a people who, for thousands of years, had been in contact with such practices.
A close study of the form of worship that was observed at Elephantine was made by E. Maclaurin, in 1968, at the University of Sydney, Australia. He concluded:
…that it was of a form which could not have existed in a Hebrew group which had been exposed to the influences of Sinai and Canaan after the settlement.23
In other words Maclaurin rules out any possibility of the Community at Elephantine having derived from outside Egypt after the Exodus, let alone at the time of Solomon or the kings of Israel.
ELEPHANTINE ISLAND AND AKHETATEN
The main similarities between the religious life at Elephantine and at Akhetaten can be summarized, bearing in mind that for a ‘rogue’ community of priests and their followers to have survived for so long, at times isolated but at later periods surrounded by Egyptians worshipping conflicting deities, cannot have been easy. Their original well-being and security would have been strengthened by armed Hebrew soldiers, but strategic acquiescence to local customs may have become a necessity as the Island itself became more populated and developed into the centre of worship of a local plume-bedecked, ram-headed god, Chnemu, who moulded man out of clay on a potter’s wheel.
The Community’s Temple was in proportion to the Great Temple at Akhetaten, and its orientation appeared to be the same.
There is no indication of holocaust sacrifices taking place. Offerings were similar to those made at Akhetaten.
Men and women had equal status in marriage.
Monogamy seemed to be the rule.
Their phraseology in writing was similar to contemporary writing at Akhetaten.
They communicated in Aramaic, the successive lingua franca in Egypt to the Akkadian language used at Akhetaten.
The stark conclusion must be that the pseudo-Jewish priestly Community that existed at Elephantine at the southern extremity of Egypt exhibited many ancient Hebraic-like religious attitudes but also had so many differences from the mainstream Israelite religion as to have derived its original beliefs from a common source. This source, however, was not from post-Exodus Israel but was from the monotheistic Egypt of Akhenaten.
When the banished priests of Akhetaten fled to safety, they made what, in retrospect, can be seen as a sensible choice – a remote part of Egypt, relatively unknown and inaccessible to pursuers. It was also a logical choice – a place ‘opened-up’ by Akhenaten’s great grandfather, Amenhotep II, in which perhaps lay a secluded location better known to him than to any other then living Egyptian.24 What better place for the priests of Akhetaten to flee to, accompanied by a band of Hebrew bodyguards whom Joseph might have helped them to enlist, to guard them in their perilous journey? To a land bordering Cush, at the outermost extremities of the Egyptian Empire, with the Nile cataracts as added protection.
If my suppositions are correct, the Akhetaten priestly sect and their Hebrew bodyguards arrived in Elephantine Island around 1330 BCE, still carrying some of the treasures of the Great Temple at Akhetaten. This was a place where the Amenhotep family ideas might still have had some sway. For a time this is where the fleeing priestly group hid until the crisis was ameliorated.
It was from this land of Cush that Moses, 150 years later, was to take a wife and study under the priesthood of his father-in-law – in an enclave of monotheism. At the time Moses was ‘in the land of the Kush’, around 1240 BCE, his interaction with the Elephantine Community would have reinforced his already established radical ideas of monotheism. When he left Egypt for the last time, leading the Children of Israel toward the Promised Land, Moses perhaps took with him some of the Akhetaten priests and their Hebrew bodyguards. They, in turn, became the natural guardians of the holy treasures, the Ark of the Covenant…and many secrets.
Moses took away with him the fundamental beliefs of Egyptian-Judaism into the desert and refined and expanded them during the forty years of wandering into the Ten Commandments, and the additional 603 Commandments delineating how a Jew should live and behave. These refinements were unavailable to the Community at Elephantine until they re-established contact with their ancestral compatriots in the Holy Land during the
time of the Persian conquests.
Of course, there has to be an element of conjecture in the sequence of events I suggest, but they do fit the known facts more closely than any other theory. They also give an explanation of how the prophets Isaiah and Amos knew – through Moses – about a religious outpost in southern Egypt, especially as there was no contact between that outpost and Israel until the fifth century BCE.
It also neatly explains the strange mystery of why there was a Jewish-style settlement at Elephantine: why, when the Persians conquered Egypt and arrived at Elephantine around 525 BCE, they discovered this peculiar religious Community that worshipped the same invisible God of the Hebrews. They had their own Temple but followed a quite different form of Judaism to that of Israel. Why they were so wealthy and had been able to furnish their Temple with gold, silver and precious materials. Why they did not appear to have kept the Passover festival or know the Oral Laws or Torah, why their legal, fiscal and social customs were predominantly Egyptian – dating back to at least the time of Akhenaten – and why they communicated in Aramaic and not Hebrew.
The fascinating thing about this lost people is that, when knowledge of their fifth century BCE version of monotheistic Judaism became known to us through the Aramaic papyri, it differed from the mainstream in just the kind of aspects that one would expect had they not experienced the post-Egyptian Exodus developments in their beliefs.
Although the Community eventually disappeared from Elephantine Island, a thread of Jewish presence in Egypt continued through to the thirteenth century CE, as demonstrated in the ‘Cairo Genizah’ collection, and right up until today.
There remains the knotty question of ‘What happened to the Jews of Elephantine after the fifth century BCE?’ It is not thought that they were slaughtered by their enemies, but after 410 BCE they were gone. Did they just vanish?
With the return of Egyptian power to the area after Persia’s influence waned, perhaps the Community came under threat from the indigenous population. The Egyptians may well have determined to take their revenge on an alien enclave they saw as allied to their previous conquerors – a Community that, moreover, now corresponded with foreign cousins in another land. Once before they had sought sanctuary by travelling south. Could it be that the pseudo-Jews of Elephantine now moved even further south for greater safety? I believe the answer is yes, they did.
To the south of the Aswan region, beyond the borders of Egypt, lies more of the Biblical land of ‘Cush’ or ‘Kush’, also variously referred to as ‘Nubia’. Even further south lies ‘Meroe’, today’s northern Sudan, and ‘Abyssinia’, today’s Ethiopia.
Whether the Community at Elephantine’s departure was force majeur, or a more controlled retreat, would indicate whether they were obliged to hide hurriedly any remaining treasures of Akhetaten in their possession that were too cumbersome to take with them, or to take everything. If it was the former, further and deeper excavations at the site of the Jewish quarter on Elephantine Island or places previously known to their ancestors – the priests of Akhenaten – are well warranted. The fact that the area has been extensively excavated, particularly by German archaeologists, and has so far revealed nothing of the treasures described in the Copper Scroll does, however, have a positive side to it. It may mean that the remainder of the treasure of the priests of Akhetaten, if their successors still possessed any, travelled with the remnants of the Community when it departed for Ethiopia.
CUSH AND BEYOND TO LAKE TANA
The small band of travellers who made the long trek probably took the well-known route following the river valley southward, parallel to the cataract, and rejoined the river at Konosso, from whence navigation further upstream was relatively unimpeded until the second cataract at Wadi Halfa and beyond. Or perhaps they took the long route through the western desert. Eventually, perhaps still carrying their treasure, they would have journeyed through Nubia to Lake Tana, in today’s Ethiopia, where their descendants – the Falashas – remained until the twentieth century, still practising a form of the Hebrew religion. The island that they colonized, once known as Debra Sehel, is now known as Tana Kirkos.25
This is the site where some of the descendants of the priests of Akhetaten settled and hid their remaining treasures, where their descendants took wives from among the people of Cush and spread their religious customs and wisdom amongst the indigenous population, yet kept themselves apart as a separate foreign ‘Falasha’ Community.
If this residual Community was a tributary of Akhenatenism that had retreated further up the Nile to Ethiopia, one might expect to find some manifestation of the monotheistic principles that existed at Elephantine carrying on for a period, or even surviving to this day, in the region of Lake Tana. These expectations are not disappointed on either count.
The Community of Lake Tana had similar customs and practices to the pseudo-Jewish Community of Elephantine, reflecting a people who had not participated in the mainstream Judaism of Canaan. They too were devoid of post-Mosaic knowledge, the Oral Laws or knowledge of the significant festivals. Like the Essenes, they did not keep Purim or the ceremonies related to the Dedication of the Temple.
There is to this day a small group of ‘Falasha’ Ethiopian Jews living in Ethiopia – a residue of the many who have now migrated to modern Israel. They originally lived north of Lake Tana, in the northern part of Ethiopia, near to the Choke Mountains. It is at the very time that the Elephantine Community can no longer be traced that the existence of the Falashas in Ethiopia becomes apparent. Can it really be that the descendants of the priests of the City of Akhetaten, later to be known as ‘Amarna’, finally settled here? Is it just another coincidence that the area near Lake Tana is today still known by the name ‘Amhara’? I don’t think so.
We are now, however, taking up the religious and cultural threads of a people that have, I postulate, been twice removed geographically from their original source of inspiration at Akhetaten, in northern Egypt, and ‘corrupted’ by centuries of overlays of other religions and cultures. If there are any commonalities that are unique to the Falashas, the Elephantine Community and Akhenatenism and different from the normative Israelite form of Judaism, they will be highly significant and difficult to explain away, except as proof of a common religious ancestry.
How this proto-Jewish Community arrived in Ethiopia is, for most historians, still shrouded in mystery. There are three main theories that try to explain their origins and arrival. A measure of how correct these theories are can be gained by assessing how the Judaism of the Falashas differs from normative Judaism, and if those differences exhibited commonalities with Elephantine pseudo-Judaism, with Akhenatenism, and perhaps to the Qumran-Essenes’ unique form of Judaism and its parallels to Akhenatenism.
The main theories suggest that the Falashas are:
related to Jews who travelled across from the Yemen or southern Arabia
descendants from the time of King David, or King Solomon, or King Manasseh.
related to Jews who travelled up the Nile from Egypt.
Yemen and Southern Arabia
Historical evidence makes it reasonably certain that a form of Judaism was fairly widespread in Ethiopia before the coming of Christianity to the country in the fourth century CE. Some authoritative sources26 put this presence down to the arrival of Jews from southern Arabia sometime after 70 CE, and perceive that the Falashas were there some 2,000 years ago. There is, however, diversity of opinion as to whether the Falashas were Ethiopians ‘converted’ by diaspora Jews, or the result of assimilation.
Professor Clapham, from the University of Lancaster, England, thinks it is extremely doubtful that the Falashas ‘can be regarded either as descendants of any part of the Jewish diaspora, or even as authentically Jewish converts’.27
The David, Solomon and Manasseh Theories
Some legends speak of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba’s son, Prince Menelik, migrating to Ethiopia with a number of Israelites, including priests and Levites, aroun
d 900 BCE. At the same time he is said to have surreptitiously removed the Ark of the Covenant and the Tablets of the Law from Jerusalem and brought them to the then capital of Nubia (equatable with Ethiopia), Aksum.
To have removed the sacred objects without anyone noticing, or recording, the event seems rather fanciful. Nevertheless legends of this type invariably contain an element, if only a grain, of truth and this one gives added support to the idea that priests, Levites and Hebrews were amongst the Falashas’ ancestors.
There are many other legends, including one that members of the tribes of Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher left Israel during the rift between Solomon’s son Rehoboam and Jeroboam and travelled up through Egypt and then into Cush.28
Graham Hancock, in his book The Sign and the Seal, proposes that the ancestors of the Falashas fled Israel at the time of the ‘evil’ King Manasseh, c.650 BCE, taking the Ark of the Covenant with them, and built a Temple at Elephantine to house the Ark. He suggests they then took the Ark with them when they fled again to Ethiopia around 400 BCE. However, the hypothesis is predicated on the idea that Levite priests removed the Ark from the First Temple at Jerusalem to avoid it being ‘in the same place as the idol Asherah’.29 The hypothesis becomes very shaky when it is considered that the idol Astarte appeared to be worshipped alongside Yahwe at the Elephantine Temple.
In modern times, the erstwhile leader of Ethiopia, Emperor Haile Selassie, calling himself the ‘Lion of Judah’, claimed direct descent back to King David. This claim would seem to imply that the Jews had been in Ethiopia for at least 3,000 years!
‘Along the Nile’ Theories
More concrete reports come from the Greek historians Herodotus, Eratosthenes and Strabo,*58 who all attest that during the Persian occupation of Egypt a sizeable number of people, probably Aramaen mercenaries, from the area of the Jewish-style settlement at Elephantine, migrated to Ethiopia between 594 and 589 BCE.30 When the Community at Elephantine finally ‘disappeared’ around 420 BCE, what would be more natural than that the survivors would follow the path of predecessors (who they may even have kept contact with), to Ethiopia?
The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran Page 32