ABSTRACT
The earliest relevant literature comes from a Jewish military colony stationed on the island of Elephantine opposite the city of Syene in Upper Egypt. Aramaic papyri found at the site and coming mostly from the late fifth century BCE contain many dates (often double dates from different systems) that allow us to draw some conclusions about the calendars that were employed by the inhabitants in their letters, contracts, and other official documents. B.Porten has recently surveyed all the relevant evidence from Egyptian Aramaic texts, whether from, or dealing with, Jews or related to people of another race. He organizes the dates in the documents into three categories: those with exclusively Egyptian dates; those with exclusively Babylonian dates; and those which have synchronized double (Babylonian and Egyptian) dates. He surveys twenty one texts with Egyptian dates alone. Among these are four letters that are written between Jews. The category of texts using Babylonian dates alone is smaller but again, in some cases, they are employed by Jews. In these texts the month names Nisan, Sivan, Tammuz, Marcheshvan, and Tebet appear. The double-date category is the largest (about thirty texts). In them the Babylonian date always comes first, and all the Babylonian month names occur except Tebet. Porten concludes from the data that “there is no evidence for a Jewish calendar at Elephantine as distinct from the Babylonian calendar” (Porten 1990:32). It is interesting that the Jewish people whose lives are reflected in the papyri employed the calendars in use in the cosmopolitan context in which they lived. The Egyptian calendar was a solar one of 360 days plus five epagomenal or extra days tacked on to the end of the year. The Babylonian system (which the Persians adopted) was a lunar arrangement that was adjusted with an intercalary month seven times in nineteen years.
