The Jewish Diaspora

Migration

Settlement in Hellenistic Alexandria

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300–100 BCELand of Israel → Alexandria & Hellenistic Egypt

Why it happened

After Alexander founded Alexandria and Ptolemy I seized Judea, he deported some hundred thousand Jewish captives to Egypt and planted armed men in its garrisons;12 the fertile land and the Ptolemies' liberality then drew a stream of voluntary settlers.1

The migration

Jewish settlement in Egypt grew over two centuries into the largest community of the age. Under Ptolemy I some hundred thousand captives were carried from Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem into Egypt, and about thirty thousand armed men were placed in garrisons across the country;12 Ptolemy II afterward freed these captives.2 In Alexandria Jews filled two of the city's five districts3 and governed themselves under their own ethnarch,4 while communities spread through many towns of the Egyptian countryside.5 Philo reckoned Egypt's Jews at no fewer than a million.3 The diaspora produced the Septuagint, translated under royal patronage,2 and a flourishing Greek-Jewish culture; around 160 BCE the exiled priest Onias IV built a rival temple in the Heliopolite nome, modeled on Jerusalem's.6

Sources

  1. BFlavius Josephus. 94. Antiquities of the Jews, Book XII, Chapter 1. The Works of Flavius Josephus, trans. William Whiston link
  2. BPseudo-Aristeas. -150. Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates. trans. R. H. Charles, The Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (1913) link
  3. BPhilo of Alexandria. 41. Against Flaccus (In Flaccum). The Works of Philo Judaeus, trans. C. D. Yonge link
  4. BFlavius Josephus. 94. Antiquities of the Jews, Book XIV, Chapter 7 (14.117, quoting Strabo of Amaseia). The Works of Flavius Josephus, trans. William Whiston link
  5. BModrzejewski JM. 1997. The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian. Princeton University Press link
  6. BFlavius Josephus. 94. Antiquities of the Jews, Book XIII, Chapter 3. The Works of Flavius Josephus, trans. William Whiston link