Judeans in Elephantine and Babylonia: A Case Study on Rights and Tenancy Status
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: This paper is a case study that discusses Judean rights and tenancy in Egypt under the Persian administration. It uses TAD A6.11, a Persian Aramaic decree about farmland rights in Egypt, as an example of an imperial document to mediate a comparison between the Babylonian Judean experience in farmlands and Egyptian Judean experience on the (sub-)urban island of Elephantine under Persian rule. First a Babylonian Judean document, CUSAS 28 no. 69 is used to interpret the enigmatic, yet central legal claim about crushing the ilku-tax in TAD A6.11. The two sources are then compared, and the implications of the findings are studied by referring to documents of Elephantine Judeans regarding tenancy rights (mhḥsn-status). The findings demonstrate that the two communities are socially comparable, so long as the Persian administrative system is considered in a comparison of the communities’ surviving documents.
Author: James D. Moore
Institution: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3007802347