The People Before the Book

This papyrus is one of hundreds discovered on Egypt’s Elephantine Island that provide insight into a community of people originally from Judah, once the southern part of the biblical Kingdom of Israel, who lived there in the sixth and fifth centuries b.c. The document provides evidence of the community’s efforts to reconstruct their temple.

As the Nile flows north out of Sudan into Upper, or southern, Egypt, it passes a small island that was a crossroads of exchange between Africa and the

Sara Toth Stub is a journalist based in Jerusalem.