| Sanballat and The Elephantine Papyri |
| Nehemiah 2:10
Sanballat the Horonite |
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| The
Elephantine Papyri contains the name Sanballat.
Egyptian Museum of Berlin. |
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Sanballat is found
in the book of Nehemiah 10 times.
The Elephantine Papyri
The Elephantine Papyri is a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts dating
from the fifth century BC. They come from a Jewish community at Elephantine,
the island in the Nile at the border of Nubia. The ‘Passover letter’ of
419 BCE (discovered in 1907), which gives detailed instructions for properly
keeping Passover is in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin. Further Elephantine papyri
are at the Brooklyn Museum. The discovery of the Brooklyn papyri is a remarkable
story itself. The documents were first acquired in 1893 by New York journalist
Charles Edwin Wilbour. After lying in a warehouse for more than 50 years, the
papyri were shipped to the Egyptian Department of the Brooklyn Museum. It was
at this time that scholars finally realized that “Wilbour had acquired
the first Elephantine papyri”. The papyri are reported to confirm the
account found in the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah, specifically mentioning
two people in mentioned in the book of Nehemiah, Sanballat the Horonite and
Johanan, Neh. 2:19, 12:23 (Merrill Unger, Unger’s Bible Handbook, p.260).
Translation Elephantine Papyri:
“We have also set forth the whole matter in a letter in our name to Delaiah
and Shelemiah, the sons of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria.
Furthermore, Arsames (the Persian satrap) knew nothing of all that was perpetrated
on us. On the twentieth of Marheshwan, the seventeenth year of Darius
the King. “
The
full translation of the letter that contains
Sanballat’s name |
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Scriptures
Nehemiah 4:1 But it came to pass, that
when Sanballat heard that we builded
the
wall, he was wroth, and took great
indignation, and mocked the Jews.
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