The Aramaic papyri found on the island of Elephantine, Egypt (ancient Yeb, opposite Syene) come from the fifth century BC. They include letters, personal archives, public archives, the 'Words of Ahikar,' the Behistun inscription, accounts, and lists. Cowley provides here the Aramaic transcriptions and English translations for all the texts available to him. In this edition, an updated bibliography is provided.

Long recognized as a brilliant cross-cultural study, Yochanan Muffs’ work analyzes the legal formulary of the Aramaic papyri from Elephantine, at the first cataract of the Nile, where a Persian garrison comprised of Jewish soldiers and their families lived throughout most of the 5th century B.C.E. These documents are of exceptional importance for the study of ancient Near Eastern law, and Muffs has investigated their formative background through extensive references to cuneiform law, by a method he calls “the Assyriological approach”. Virtually every aspect of law-sale of land, marriage and family law, loans and credit, the taking of oaths, and the granting of bequests is studied in great depth and with unusual clarity. Muffs’ work has enjoyed renewed interest in the light of more recent discoveries of Aramaic legal documents from later periods, as in the Judean Desert.

175 documents, spanning more than 3,000 years, from the ancient mounds on the island of Elephantine are translated into English here for the first time. A massive collection of papyri and ostraca, written in many scripts and tongues - including hieratic, demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Coptic and Arabic.

The famous German excavations between 1906 and 1908 of Elephantine Island in Egypt produced some of the most important Aramaic sources for understanding the history of Judeans and Arameans living in 5th century BCE Egypt under Persian occupation. Unknown to the world, many papyri fragments from those excavations remained uncatalogued in the Berlin Museum. In New Aramaic Papyri from Elephantine in Berlin James D. Moore edits the remaining legible Aramaic fragments, which belong to letters, contracts, and administrative texts. To view supplementary material from the volume go here.