610 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
. Which Waidrang, that * * * has destroyed 
. in the 14th year of King Darius. 
. To be rebuilt in its place, as it was before 
. and meal-offerings and frankincense shall be offered upon 
. that altar likewise as before 
11. was used to be done.” 
SrcOuOoe ap 
To sum up the facts to be derived from these documents: 
There was in Elephantine in the fifth century B. C. a Jewish 
community which possessed a spacious, well-built temple with five 
gates and a cedar roof. The builders of the temple had been rich 
enough to have cedars transported from the far Lebanon forests to the 
border of Nubia, and their descendants were rich enough to have 
sacrificial bowls of gold and silver. 
The temple had already existed for a long time when Document 
I was written in 408-407 B. C. Cambyses, when he entered Egypt 
in 525, found it there, and while he destroyed the temples of the 
gods of Egypt he, the son of the great prince who allowed the Jews 
living in Babylonian captivity to return to their home, did not 
inflict any injury to the temple of the Jewish community in Elephan- 
tine. When was this temple built? When was the Jewish community 
in Elephantine settled? After the destruction of Jerusalem by 
the Babylonians in 588? After the destruction of Samaria by the 
Assyrians in 723% The documents and fragments of documents dis- 
covered at Elephantine, instructive as they are concerning many 
other things, give no information on these points. 
In this temple they offered to the God Jahu, the Lord of Heaven, 
their prayers, their burnt-offerings, meal-offerings, and frankin- 
cense. They worshipped him with undivided loyalty. There is here 
no trace of their having turned away in any manner toward the 
gods of Egypt. When their temple was destroyed they mourned 
in sackcloth and with fasting; they had no consecrated place where 
they could serve their God, and in touching words they pronounced 
their gratitude to the man who could perhaps procure them the pos- 
sibility of rebuilding their temple, promising, with their wives and 
children, to pray to their God for him, a Zoroastrian. 
The Jews enjoyed the protection of Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes. 
Under their régime they had led a peaceful and in every respect 
satisfactory existence, and it was only when Arsames, the Persian 
governor, left the country to go to the court of the King that a 
conspiracy of Egyptian priests and Persian subordinate officials 
succeeded in destroying the sanctuary of the Jewish community. 
But the reaction which soon followed and the punishment of the 
evil doers seems again to have been the work of the Persian Govern- 
ment. 
Thus these documents show anew that the policy of the Ache- 
menides was favorable to the Jews. Cyrus gave them permission to 
