is in the same northern area, and we now have evidence that Sanballat established a dynasty of governors there that may well have lasted until Alexander the Great arrived more than a century later. Evidence for this claim comes from a set of papyri that were found in the Wadi ed-Daliyeh in the early 1960s. These Samaria Papyri, most of which are contracts, were written in Aramaic and date from the mid-300s BCE. In some of them, the name Sanballat is preserved, and from those references, a family