element in the Judean onomasticon seems to be limited to EL and YH/YHW = biblical Yhwh (Lemaire 2002b: p. 217). We also have Aramaic, Phoenician, Edomite, and Arabian personal and divine names (Lemaire 2002b: pp. 224–226; Porten and Yardeni 2006; Kloner and Stern 2007; E. Eshel 2007). In this context an ostracon that mentions the sanctuaries of three deities is of special interest: “House (i.e. Temple) of ‘Uzza,’” “House of Yahu,” and “House of Nabu” (Lemaire 2002a Nr. 283; cf. Lemaire 2001, 2006: pp. 416–417; 2015: pp. 118–119). Apparently the cultic worship of the Judean‐Samarian deity Yahu was not limited to the “place that Yhwh will chose” (Deut. 12) during the fourth century BCE. The historical constellation represented in the epigraphic material appears not to differ from the one of the Judeans at Elephantine (Kratz 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015; Becking 2011: pp. 128–142) or from the (Israelite) worshippers of Yhwh in the Province of Samaria.
At Wadi Daliyeh, 14 km north of Jericho, excavations have yielded – besides several human skeletons – Aramaic papyri, clay bullae, and coins from Samaria (Leith 1997; Gropp 2001; Dušek 2007; Kratz 2015: pp. 165–181; Lemaire 2015: pp. 75–86; on Samaria see also Zengellér 2011; Frey, Schattner‐Rieser, and Schmid 2012; Knoppers 2013; Hensel 2016). How this material arrived at its place of discovery we do not know. It is commonly presumed that refugees transported the material there when they had to flee from the city of Samaria after the failed uprising against Andromachos, the prefect of Alexander the Great. The papyri are not very well preserved but due to their formulaic character they can be fairly well reconstructed. The material stems from the fourth century BCE and more precisely from the time of Artaxerxes II to Darius III. The coins discovered in various places of the Province of Samaria can be dated to the same period (Meshorer and Qedar 1991, 1999; Mildenberg 1996). The papyri are private deeds that first and foremost deal with the selling of slaves, but there is also the deed of a house sale and receipts for the repayment of a loan; in one case we may even have the minutes of a legal dispute. The clay bullae and coins are of interest because of their iconography. Here too, the minting shows different (Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Persian, and Greek) cultural influences and motifs, amongst them representations of deities and naked men. Especially significant is a coin that shows a portrait and inscription of the god Zeus on one side and has a Yahwistic name on the reverse (Lemaire 2002b: p. 223; 2015: pp. 81–82). The rededication of the two temples of Yhwh on Mt. Gerizim and in Jerusalem to sanctuaries of Zeus under Antiochus IV obviously fell on fertile ground.
The onomasticon of the papyri from Samaria as well as of the inscribed bullae and coins attests a similar picture (Lemaire 2002b: pp. 221–222; Dušek 2007: pp. 486–495). Here we have – especially amongst the owners, contractual partners, and slaves – mostly Israelite‐Judean names; next to them and especially amongst the witnesses for the deeds and the officials there exists a plethora of Aramaic, Phoenician, Edomite, Akkadian, and Persian names. Being aware of the problems and pitfalls of the interpretation of such findings we can, nevertheless, say that the situation is reminiscent of the situation in Judah and Elephantine and implies the same historical constellation: we learn of a coexistence and cooperation of several ethnicities within the political structures of the Persian Empire. These ethnicities do not define their identity by a strict separation from each other; rather, they live side by side while at the same time ensuring their own identity. An influence of biblical norms on daily life, for example in matters of slave trade or ethnic separation, cannot be detected in the preserved documents.
The political structure, too, reflected in the epigraphic material reminds us of its Judean neighbors and of Elephantine. The name Samaria is attested in its long form (šmryn/šmrn) as well as in abbreviations (šmr, šm, šn, š). The Persian satrapy of Transeuphrates is the superordinated political unit. Its satrap Mazaios/Masdaj is mentioned by its full name or in abbreviated form (mz) on coins: “Mazday who resides over Ebir‐nari and Cilicia” (mzdy zy ʿl ʿbr nhra wḥlk). Samaria itself had the status of a province (šmryn mdyntʾ) and was ruled by a governor (pḥt šmryn/šmrn). The capital is called a “fortress” (šmryn byrtʾ). In accordance to this terminology, the papyri are written “in the fortress Samaria (that is) in the Province of Samaria.” Coins mention a prefect (sgnʾ) and judges (dynʾ) as subordinate officials. In addition we have several names without a title; here we can assume that they belong to further administrative officers who had the right to mint coins, amongst them maybe even priests as they belong to the ruling elite of a “fortress” – both in the Province of Yehud and in Elephantine.
The direct historical contact with the Judean “fortress Yeb” (Elephantine) is established by the figure of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria who is mentioned in the epigraphic material from Samaria as well as in the papyri from Elephantine. In both cases his sons are mentioned too as they either represent their father or succeeded him in office. There is one son with a Yahwistic name attested on a seal from Samaria (WD 22). Then we have the two sons called Delaiah and Shelemiah in the papyri from Elephantine where they were involved in the rebuilding of the temple in Elephantine (TADAE A4.7–8 and A4.9); they may also be represented by the abbreviations dl and šl on Samarian coins. One of the Samarian papyri from the year 354 BCE also mentions a governor called Hananiah. This attestation helps to reconstruct the list of the governors of Samaria from Darius II down to Darius III: Sanballat and his sons Delaiah, Shelemiah and [?]YHW (Delayahu?) in the first half and Hananiah in the second half of the fourth century BCE. The common assumption of two or three governors bearing the same name – an assumption trying to harmonize the epigraphic material with the account of Nehemiah (Neh. 2:10.19, etc.) and Josephus (AJ 11.302–303) – is superfluous (Kratz 2004: pp. 93–106; Dušek 2007: pp. 516–549, 2012a; followed by Lemaire 2015: p. 83).
To complete the picture let us mention in passing a further corpus of inscriptions, namely Aramaic and Hebrew votive inscriptions discovered on Mt. Gerizim. According to the excavators these inscriptions could date back to the fifth and fourth centuries BCE (Magen Misgav, and Tsfania 2004; Magen 2008: pp. 227–242) but they appear more likely to be products of Hellenistic times (Dušek 2012b; De Hemmer Gudme 2013). They are, nevertheless, relevant for the Persian period as they refer to a temple already founded in the fifth century BCE that was the central sanctuary of the worshippers of Yhwh in the Province of Samaria (Magen 2008). Like the persons whom we know from the material from Wadi Daliyeh and from the coins who bear Yahwistic names, so the Yhwh worshippers from Mt. Gerizim were “Samarians” or “Samaritans.” This label – like “Judeans” in the Province of Yehud or in Elephantine – is nothing more than a local, political, and ethnic attribute. In Hellenistic times these Samarian Yahwists occasionally called themselves “Israelites” (Delos) and accepted the Pentateuch, the Torah of Moses, as their holy scripture. Whether this was already the case during the Persian period is a historical problem yet to be solved (Knoppers 2006; Kratz 2007, 2015; Dušek 2012b: pp. 65–118), as is the relationship of the Yahwists represented in the inscriptions from Mt. Gerizim to the Yahwists known to us from epigraphic material of the Achaemenid period.
Literary Sources
Literary sources that are attested archeologically in the Achaemenid period are only known to us from Elephantine: Here we have the “Words of Ahiqar” and an Aramaic version of the Bisitun inscription (TADAE C1.1 and C2). Otherwise we have to rely entirely on the biblical tradition and on the tradition dependent on it, such as the Jewish Antiquities of Flavius Josephus.
In contrast to the literary works from Elephantine that fit well into the picture reflected by the epigraphic material, the biblical tradition contains a series of particularities. On the one hand, it presupposes the situation reflected in the epigraphic material, and the Bible sometimes even contains information – especially names and individual dates or even literary pieces – that can be aligned with the archeological findings. On the other hand, in its vast majority the biblical tradition has little to do with the epigraphic material and should not be harmonized with it hastily (Edelman 2012). Rather, the Bible seems to be highly critical toward the historical situation and even rejects it by creating its own religious counter‐world, a world that centers on the Torah of Moses and/or the biblical prophets (Kratz 2004: pp. 93–119, 2015).
In