The Aramaic documents left by the Aramean-Jewish military colony which protected the interests of the Persian empire at the southern border of Egypt on the island of Elephantine in the 5th century B.C. are among the most significant archeological discoveries of this century. Three archives of approximately a dozen documents each have been recovered, two being family records and the other a community archive. Two of these archives were discovered and published in the first decade of this century and created considerable stir in learned circles. The third archive, rediscovered in a biscuit box in the basement of the Brooklyn Museum, was published at the time when the "Dead Sea Scrolls" were dominating public interest and thus received scant popular attention. The Elephantine archives provide the earliest documentation for the corporate life of a Jewish community in the diaspora. There are many points of contact with the Bible, especially with the books of Ezra and Nehemiah with which they are roughly contemporary. Our knowledge of Imperial Aramaic comes mainly from the Elephantine archives, and the many Persian and Egyptian words they contain are of
interest to Iranologists and Egyptologists. The legal data in these documents provide an important link in the chain of ancient Near Eastern law. The daily life of a colony of Jewish soldiers on the southern end of the Persian empire is vividly illuminated by these family and communal archives.
Professor Porten's thorough and extremely interesting study of the documents from Syene and Elephantine is presented in three parts, the first part devoted to political and economic life, the second to religious life, and the third to family and communal life.