Berlin Museum Island: Sweet beer, boiled four times, strained and drunk

In the middle of the river lies a city surrounded by the Nile, Elephantine is its name. It is the first origin, the first region into Nubia…” This is what you can read on the so-called “Famine Stele”, carved on a large granite block not far from Aswan.

Elephantine, a small island in the middle of the mighty Nile at the northern end of the 1st Cataract, lies about 1000 kilometers south of Cairo, opposite the modern city of Aswan. Today the river is tamed there by a dam, once built with the help of the Soviet Union and ceremoniously inaugurated in 1971 by Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser. In ancient times, rapids made shipping on the Nile extremely risky or even impossible. On the other hand, the annual floods with their masses of mud brought fertility to the land. From which the island benefited. Elephantine soon became a religious center with the temples of the gods Khnum and Satet. The name of the island goes back to the ancient Egyptian word “jeb” (elephant, ivory). Later translated by the Greeks as “elephas,” it may allude to the rounded rocks that rise from the rapids like the backs of elephants. Perhaps this is also an indication that ivory was an important trade commodity at that time.

Archaeologists have been interested in the area around Aswan since the early 19th century. When English researchers discovered a large manuscript there in 1904, it brought the European heavyweights in the still young scientific discipline of Egyptology onto the scene and to the island. German and French researchers competed in digging, “but it was we who hit the jackpot this time,” rejoiced Adolf Erman, director of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, looking back in his memories. “We find papyrus fragments in an excavated house at the very first dig at the top of the hill, so we can conclude that there is indeed something to be found here,” he wrote on January 31, 1906, the first day of the excavation Diary. And he was right. Over the next two years, Rubensohn and Friedrich Zucker found hundreds of papyri and manuscripts on behalf of the Royal Museums in Berlin. According to antiquities law in Egypt, finds were distributed to the German capital »all ostraca and papyri as well as, at my special request,” says Rubensohn, “all seal impressions.” Today they are part of the papyrus collection of the Egyptian Museum Berlin.

The German Archaeological Institute in Cairo and the Swiss Institute for Egyptian Building Research have been excavating on the island since 1969. The aim is to comprehensively explore the city with its temples, houses and workshops. It has been proven that the island was settled around 3500 BC. began and continued until the 12th/13th century. Century AD lasted. Elephantine has a proud history and culture spanning over 4,000 years.

Written fragments that were discovered on the island and are now stored in more than 60 museums in 24 countries around the world report on these. Deciphering them is very difficult, especially because of the vulnerability of the papyrus rolls or packets, which are often very brittle; it requires special care and special, complex methods to open them. As part of a project funded by the European Economic Council (ERC), a total of 10,745 papyri and other text fragments from Elephantine were made decipherable and digitally accessible between 2015 and 2022. The result of these international and interdisciplinary efforts can now be admired in a magnificent exhibition on Berlin’s Museum Island.

People of different origins, cultures and religions lived peacefully together in Elephantine for four millennia.

In the James Simon Gallery, visitors are first welcomed into a replica excavation tent containing transport boxes and photos of excavations. You can see the excavation permit for the first German expedition, the protocol of the division of the excavation area between French and Germans and Rubensohn’s excavation diary, which you can browse through digitally. Writing utensils are presented. Shards of broken clay vessels, so-called ostraca, were used for simple, short texts. They were cheap and always in stock. But leather, parchment, palm leaves and wood were also used. Initially it was written with black soot ink. Iron gall ink was added in Greek times. Individual letters and symbols were highlighted with red ink.

The written documents are sorted thematically and make life, faith and everyday life on Elephantine visible. The variety of languages ​​and scripts is impressive: ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs; Hieratic and Demotic from ancient Egypt, Aramaic from the Near East, Greek, Coptic, Meroitic, Latin and finally Arabic. They point to the colorful mix of peoples that lived on the island. A marriage contract names witnesses with Aramaic, Judean and Egyptian names. Other documents mention Greeks, Macedonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Nubians, Romans and Arabs.

The texts provide information about education and science. There are complicated geometric and astronomical calculations, and stars and constellations of the southern sky are named. Some ostraca with fractions or conjugations provide insights into everyday school life, others provide medical advice for eye and spinal diseases, earaches and toothaches. A papyrus from the 7th or 6th century BC. Chr. recommends against coughs: “Sweet beer, 25 units, boiled four times, strained and drunk…” This is accompanied by a warning not to overdo it with the dosage of alcohol.

Since Elephantine was a large trading center, the large number of sales contracts, goods and price lists, invoices and promissory notes is not surprising. One papyrus mentions the import of rocks, honey and myrrh, another reports the delivery of oil, wood, honey, rubber and incense to the temple of Khnum. Of interest is an ostracon written in Greek on March 27, 150 BC. The payment of 2000 drachmas for the purchase of royal linen is recorded. To avoid misunderstandings, the invoice amount is noted again in demo table.

The written documents provide valuable insights into the role of the family, marriage and women. In a will written in Greek, the spouses named each other as heirs in the event of death and also stipulated: “All the sons together support them (the parents) and contribute to the payment of their debts.” a papyrus letter dated January 7, 302 BC. BC: “If you feel comfortable, you can… consult the oracle of the (goddess) Isis about the woman I should take home.” A large marriage contract written on leather, drawn up by an Arabic notary, is revealing on January 6, 948 AD. He begins with the Besmala, the Islamic invocation formula, and promises a substantial wedding gift of 90 gold dinars. The names mentioned indicate that the couple’s parents were Christians, but the young couple converted to Islam. What is unusual is that the contract was signed by 77 (!) Muslim witnesses.

This document leads into the area of ​​religion and belief. Foreigners came to the island as victors or prisoners of war, mercenaries, traders and craftsmen, where they lived in their own settlements but still maintained many contacts with each other. Of course the foreigners brought their gods and religions with them. Ancient Egyptian gods as well as the God of the Jews, Christians and Muslims were at times worshiped at the same time. On an ostrakon, the servant Gaddul assures his master Micaiah: “I have praised you by Yahu and Khnum.” The Jew Gaddul called on his god Yahu (= Yahweh) and the Egyptian creator god at the same time.

Jews lived in Elephantine for several generations. The papyri already found by Rubensohn also includes the archive of the Jewish community from the period 494 to 399 BC. BC, when Egypt was under Persian rule. Two papyri are exceptional. Jedaniah, leader of the Jewish community, writes on November 25, 407 B.C. BC a request to the Persian governor of Judea. He reports that the Khnum priests, together with the Persian garrison commander, destroyed the Jahu temple on Elephantine three years earlier. Petitions to the high priest in Jerusalem went unanswered. Now the priests and citizens asked the governor to ensure that it was rebuilt. The reply letter has also been found in which the governor gives permission “to rebuild the altar house of the God of heaven… in its place as it was before.” This exchange of letters is unusual; it shouldn’t have existed in this form at all. According to Jewish tradition, there is only one “house of the Lord,” namely the Yahweh Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This has apparently been ignored in the religiously and culturally colorful Elephantine. Only a few remains of the walls of the first temple remain; the new building is better documented through excavations.

The second, smaller part of the exhibition in the New Museum is also very interesting. A large model gives an impression of the geographical and geological location of the island. The laborious research into the papyri and the ERC project already mentioned are then presented. Finally, the international team of experts will have their say via videos. At an interactive station, visitors can search for and decipher manuscripts themselves.

»Elephantine. Island of the Millennia”, James Simon Gallery and New Museum on Museum Island, Berlin; until October 27th; Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., special entry prices between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. and from 5:30 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday €12 (instead of €16), reduced €6 (instead of €8); Catalog from Kadmos (392 pages, br., €54.80)
https://elephantine.smb.museum