Jewish Politeuma of Herakleopolis

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The Politeuma of Herakleopolis was the self-governing body of the Jews in the capital of this Upper Egyptian district in Ptolemaic times . 20 papyri from the everyday legal correspondence of the Archons of the Politeuma from the period 144/43 to 133/32 BC BC give new insights into the coexistence of Hellenized Jews in the Egyptian Chora .

Source of information

The existence of a Jewish Politeuma in Herakleopolis was discovered in 2001 through the publication of the analysis of 20 texts that had been extracted from mummy cardboard and belong to the papyrus collections of Heidelberg, Cologne, Munich and Vienna. 16 texts concern petitions under private law regarding insults, breach of contract, requests for release from prison, etc., 4 texts concern correspondence with officials. The papyrus sheets appear to have been cut from rolls that were 30 to 32 cm high. They have widths of 9 to 15 cm. The back of a document (verso) often bears the address, date of receipt and subject. On the front (recto) there are usually editing notes under the last line of an entry.

With the analysis of the 20 papyri it has been possible for the first time to clearly demonstrate a Jewish Politeuma and its internal Jewish special jurisdiction in Ptolemaic Egypt.

Historical background

The existence of a Jewish community in Egypt is for Elephantine during the time of the occupation of Egypt by the Persians in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Very well documented. If the Bible is also given a historical background, then Israelites, at least in isolated cases, are likely to have settled in Egypt much earlier. After the conquest of Palestine by the Ptolemaic Empire (approx. 301 BC), Jews first came to the Egyptian heartland as prisoners of war, then as valued soldiers and a good hundred years later as refugees, because the Ptolemies battled the Seleucid Empire in the fifth and fifth sixth Syrian war, rule over Palestine 168 BC Chr. Lost again. But also as after the Maccabees uprising and after regaining religious freedom in 163 BC. When a fight broke out between Hellenistic and nationally oriented Jews, numerous Jews fled to Egypt, where they met Ptolemy VI. Philometor and his wife and sister Cleopatra II gladly accepted. Onias IV, son of the deposed high priest Onias III in 175/176, was allowed to build a fortress and a JAHWE temple near Leontopolis . In Herakleopolis, too, a Jewish fortress and a settlement were built during this time, as can be seen in the archive of the Jewish fortress commander Dioscurides (Phrurarch) .

Role of the archons

The leadership of the Politeuma of Herakleopolis was held by archons ( ἄρχων ), whose chairman was a politarch ( πολιτάρχης ). They were likely elected annually and dealt with disputes raised in petitions. These usually mention explicitly that both the plaintiff and the defendant are Jews. In three exceptional cases, the defendants are non-Jews. The task of the archons was not to establish the law, but to enforce the law with their official authority (Ptolemaic official procedure). For this purpose, they had Büttel ( λειτουργός ) who could arrange for people to be shown, possibly also their own prison ( φυλακή ) and their own notary's office ( ἀρχεῖον ). Sometimes there were "presbyters" ( πρεςβύτεροι ) in the villages , whose arbitration proceedings were monitored by the archons. The villages mentioned must therefore have had a relatively large proportion of the Jewish population.

Who exactly was a member of the Politeuma remains uncertain. The authors of the petitions call themselves either members of the Politeuma of Herakleopolis or the name of their village in the Gau. So it could be that the Politeuma only included the city, but not the Gau. On the other hand, there are indications that the port area 1.5 km from the city belonged to the jurisdiction of the archons - the building of the fortress located there with Jewish occupation may have been the reason for the creation of the Jewish Politeuma.

Hellenistic legal practice with Jewish elements

Of the 52 names of the persons appearing in the documents, only two are genuinely Jewish. All texts are written in Greek and the contracts cited therein (sales contracts, loan agreements, nurses' contracts, lease contracts) use the legal terms customary in Greek contracts of Ptolemaic Egypt. In terms of content, they also correspond to the customs of the Greek-influenced environment of the Jewish population. For example, in a loan agreement among Jews, an interest payment (standard at the time: 25%) was agreed - despite the prohibition by the Torah . For the archons, this is obviously just as little offensive as the penalty payment of the hemiolion ( ἡμιόλιον ), which was customary in Hellenistic (and Roman) times, i.e. one and a half times the purchase price that a Jewish woman demands as a penalty from the buyer of her slave who is in default. The fact that this woman can directly claim her rights without a male representative is not a feature of Jewish special jurisdiction, but is also permitted in the Ptolemaic civil justice system for Greek and Egyptian women.

The practice of placing contracts with the formula ὅρκος πάτριος (taking an oath according to the custom of the father) under an oath is not Greek, but Jewish and denoting their non-fulfillment as a breach of the law of the fathers ( πάτριος νόμος ). A man's complaint that his fiancée was given to someone else's wife without his consent to the termination of the engagement in the form of a divorce letter is based on specifically Jewish law . For divorce letter (Biblical Hebrew: סֵפֶר כְּרִיתֻת) the same expression is used here as in the Septuagint : βιβλίον ἀποστασίου . It is now documented for the first time in papyrological documents. At the same time, with this petition, Jewish ideas in marriage law can be proven for the first time in a document of Ptolemaic jurisprudence.

The Politeuma, which in the Ptolemaic Empire was supposed to serve the integration of ethnic minorities but also to protect their independence and tradition, in the form of the Jewish Politeuma of Herakleopolis, does not at first glance have prevented strong assimilation and Hellenization. On the other hand, in a foreign country an adjustment to local laws is essential, as Mar Samuel put it in the third century in the rabbinical maxim for the life of Jews in the diaspora : “The law of the country is law” ( Aramaic : דינא דמלכותא דינא dina de-malchuta dina ).

literature

  • James M. Cowey, Klaus Maresch (ed.): Documents of the Politeuma of the Jews of Herakleopolis (144 / 3–133 / 2 BC) (P. Polit. Lud.). Papyri from the collections of Heidelberg, Cologne, Munich and Vienna. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-531-09948-5 .
  • Thomas Kruse : The Jewish Politeuma of Herakleopolis in Egypt. On the method of integrating ethnic groups into the Ptolemaic state. In: Vera V. Dementyeva, Tassilo Schmitt (Hrsg.): People and democracy in antiquity. (= Bremen contributions to classical studies. Volume 1). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-7675-3057-7 , pp. 93-105.
  • Patrick Sänger : The Ptolemaic organizational form politeuma: An instrument of rule for the benefit of Jewish and other Hellenic communities , Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-16-156883-1 .

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ J. Cowey, K. Maresch (ed.): Documents from the Politeuma of the Jews of Herakleopolis (144 / 3–133 / 2 BC): Papyri from the collections of Heidelberg, Cologne, Munich and Vienna. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-531-09948-5 .
  2. ↑ Documents of the Politeuma of the Jews of Herakleopolis .
  3. ↑ Flavius ​​Josephus: Jewish War. VII 426-429
  4. ↑ James MS Cowey, Klaus Maresch, Christopher Barnes: The archive of the Phrurarchen Dioscurides (154-145 BC?) (P.Phrur.Diosk.) Papyri from the collections of Heidelberg, Cologne, Munich and Vienna. ANWAdW (Papyrologica Coloniensia XXX). Schöningh, Paderborn 2003, ISBN 3-506-71486-4 .
  5. ^ J. Cowey, K. Maresch (ed.): Documents of the Politeuma. P. 13.
  6. ^ J. Cowey, K. Maresch (ed.): Documents of the Politeuma. P. 17/18.
  7. ^ J. Cowey, K. Maresch (ed.): Documents of the Politeuma. Document 1
  8. ^ T. Kruse: The Jewish Politeuma of Herakleopolis. Pp. 99-101.
  9. ^ J. Cowey, K. Maresch (ed.): Documents of the Politeuma. Document 8
  10. ^ J. Cowey, K. Maresch (ed.): Documents of the Politeuma. Document 9
  11. ^ J. Cowey, K. Maresch (ed.): Documents of the Politeuma. Document 4
  12. ↑ Moses V, 24, 1 and 3 ( Deut 24,1 + 3  EU )