ARAMAIC WATCH: The exhibition Jewish Life in Ancient Egypt: A Family Archive From the Nile Valley, dealing with the Aramaic Elephantine papyri from the fifth century B.C.E., is showing at the Skirbal Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles has the story:

New Tales From a Post-Exodus Egypt

by Naomi Pfefferman, Arts & Entertainment Editor

Now that we�ve just finished two seders celebrating our escape from Egypt, a new exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center demonstrates that not every Jew got out of Egypt � or wanted to.

�Jewish Life in Ancient Egypt: A Family Archive From the Nile Valley,� revolves around 2,500-year-old papyrus scrolls from a cache of hundreds unearthed on Elephantine Island � the oldest extra-biblical evidence of Jews in Mitzrayim.

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�Jewish Life� comes alive through the remarkable, Aramaic-language scrolls, which describe a Jewish community on lush Elephantine 800 years after the biblical exodus. Apparently there were no hard feelings, because these people were descendants of Jews who had voluntarily returned to Egypt after the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. While elite Jews were forced into exile in Babylonia, many soldiers and common folk relocated to Egypt, which proved to be a multicultural mecca, not an anti-Semitic hellhole, according to the exhibit.

The core of the show is eight legal documents that belonged to an interfaith family in the fifth century B.C.E, when the religiously tolerant Persians ruled Egypt. The papyri tell of Ananiah, an official at the Temple of Yahou (a.k.a. Yahweh), and his wife, Tamut, who, in a twist on the haggadah story, was an Egyptian slave owned by a Jewish master, Meshullam (he allowed her to marry and to own property, per the custom of the day).

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