cause many older excavations in the surrounding necropolises remain
poorly published, we know little about the actual living conditions of the
city’s Jewish community. The magnificent synagogue of Alexandria is
known only from first-century-c.e.literary texts (Philo,Legat.134; cf. the
legendary version int. Sukkah4:6;y. Sukkah5:1 [55ab];b. Sukkah51b). Its
construction date is unknown, but its importance as a civic center for Al-
exandrian Jews is beyond doubt. It was destroyed during the uprisings
under Trajan (116-117c.e.).
Many Alexandrian Jews are attested in necropolises either through in-
scriptions (few of themin situ)orin natura.No separate cemeteries were
used. Only the treatment of the corpse was somewhat different. Unlike the
Egyptians, Jews did not practice embalming, and grave goods were rare. A
number of decorated ossuaries indicate the sporadic practice of secondary
burial.
Given the sprawling cultural interaction and the long tradition of Jew-
ish life in Egypt, it is no surprise that the earliest evidence for a crucial Jew-
ish institution comes from Egypt instead of Palestine: the dedication of a
“prayer house”(proseuch 3 )by theIoudaioiof Schedia, a suburb of Alexan-
dria, from the time of Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-221b.c.e.;CIJ1:440). Be-
cause the building itself has not been found (indeed, no synagogue build-
ing has been excavated at all in Egypt), nothing is known about its shape
and architectural context. Altogether, fifteen inscriptions and a number of
papyri from the third centuryb.c.e.to the first centuryc.e.mention a
synagogue (almost all use the termproseuch 3 ;the termsynagZg 3 is rare).Leontopolis
Around 160b.c.e.Ptolemy VI Philometor and Cleopatra III granted per-
mission to the Jewish priest Onias IV to build a temple and a town at
Leontopolis, a site in the Heliopolite nome thirty-two kilometers north-
east of Cairo in the southeastern Nile delta (Josephus,Ant.12.388; 13.63, 67,
285;J.W.1.31-33; 7.427). The temple apparently flourished until the Roman
prefect Lupus (71-73/74c.e.) was instructed by Vespasian to destroy it
(J.W.7.421), an order that only Paulinus, Lupus’s successor, followed (J.W.
7.433-35). Although it is disputed whether Onias’s temple has indeed been
identified at Tell el-Yehudiyyeh (it was excavated in 1887 and in 1906), a
large number of tombs appear to have been used by Jews. As in Alexandria,
the tombs usually follow contemporary forms. All of them arehypogea334jürgen k. zangenbergEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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