Aid for Two Benefactors

Mauziah, a leader of the Jewish community in Elephantine, informs his fellow leaders that he had been imprisoned on false charges in Abydos (Egypt) by a Persian official, Vidranga, whose actions were frequently harmful to the Elephantine Jews, but he (Mauziah) has been released through the efforts of two Egyptian men then on their way to Elephantine. In this letter, dating to the late fifth century BCE, he asks his colleagues to take care of his rescuers unstintingly.