Jewish Temples in Egypt

The Jerusalem Post has an interesting article on the two Jewish temples erected in Egypt, at Leontopolis and Elephantine.

Of the Leontopolis temple:

Josephus describes the Temple of Onias as being both like and unlike that of Jerusalem. In his Antiquities, he says it is like Jerusalem, but in his Wars of the Jews he says that Onias built it like a fortress with a tower 60 cubits (30 meters) high. Who was this Onias? In Hebrew his name is Honiah and this name was carried by several high priests descended from the famous Shimon Hatzaddik. Our Onias was probably Honiah IV, who was prevented from following in the footsteps of his father, who had been supplanted by Jason, the high priest who started the process of Hellenizing Jerusalem that led eventually to the Maccabean revolt.

Honiah IV went off to Egypt and started the Temple at Leontopolis, with the agreement of Pharaoh Ptolemy IV and his queen Cleopatra I (not the famous Cleopatra VII), in an area somewhat north of today’s Cairo. That would have been in about the year 170 BCE. Ptolemy IV was keen to have the support of Honiah, who brought with him a military force to reinforce Egyptian rule in southern Palestine, and was happy to allow him to erect a Jewish temple.

This temple had legitimacy in the eyes of the Talmud, as it was set up by the son of a traditional high priest and it fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “In that day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt…” (19:19). The Mishna tells us that a sacrifice vowed in Egypt could be redeemed at Leontopolis, but a kohen (priest) who had served in Egypt could not officiate in Jerusalem, though he was allowed to eat the truma (priestly food) there (Menahot 13:10). This temple stood for more than 200 years and was destroyed by the Romans in 73 CE, shortly after their destruction of Jerusalem.

Of the Elephantine temple:

It is on the island that guards the southern boundary of ancient Egypt and lies opposite the town of Aswan, mentioned by the prophet Ezekiel as Syene (29:10). Aramaic papyri discovered there from 1893 onward have revealed the existence of a military colony of Jews that acted as mercenaries for the Egyptians and after them to the Persians by guarding their southern border. These soldiers established a township and built their own shrine or temple before the coming of the Persians in 525 BCE, when Cambyses, son of Cyrus II, conquered Egypt….

In 1969 a German archeological team started work on the island to classify and restore the many Egyptian temples, mainly to the god Khnum, that lay there in ruins. Khnum, the ram-headed god, was worshiped here as he was considered to have control of the Nile, and this island was the site of the first cataract, which was thought to influence the rise and fall of this river, the lifeline of Egypt.

Over the next 40 years, the German team, later joined by a Swiss one, started to uncover the remains of many temples and what they called the Aramaic village of the 27th Dynasty, the Persian period of the fifth century BCE. In fact they were excavating the ruins of the Jewish houses that had been identified by Bezalel Porten, of the Hebrew University, based on the Aramaic papyri and, some 10 years ago, in the location suggested by the documents, they found the remains of the Jewish temple.

Very informative!

(H/T: Claude Mariottini)