The great settlement of Onion, occupying most of the eastern Delta, was depleted at the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The Temple of the new Jerusalem was closed in 71 A.C. by Lupus the Prefect;[51] finally, Paulinus within the next few years stripped the place, drove out the priests, shut the gates, and left the place to decay. This repression was not sheer persecution on the part of the Romans, but was caused by the Zealots, who had made the worst of the Palestine war, escaping to Egypt, and going even as far as Thebes.[52] In the interest of peace it was needful to abolish a religious centre which might have been made a rallying point for later trouble. Although history scarcely mentions the Jews in Egypt for some centuries, they were by no means expelled. As traders, perhaps as cultivators, they kept a place in the country. A surprise has come in the last few weeks by the discovery at Oxyrhynkhos, in Middle Egypt, of fragments of four papyri written in Hebrew, as early as the third century. These are thus the oldest Hebrew writings known, apart from stone inscriptions. The age of them is given by another papyrus found with them dated under Severus, 193-211 A.C. One Hebrew writing is on part of a Greek document, which by the hand is probably of the third century. The style of the Hebrew will quite agree to this, as it is closely like the synagogue inscriptions of the first century, as pointed out by Professor Hirschfeld, who has examined these papyri and made a preliminary transcript. With these letters are scraps of a liturgical work on parchment with minute writing. Two of the papyri appear to be dirges, one on the destruction of the Temple. Another papyrus has Jewish names, Joel, Nehemiah, and others. Though the Jewish half of Alexandria had been severely, if not altogether, reduced in the great rebellion under Trajan, there had been a large return of those who were attracted by the powerful centre of commerce and activity. Once more a pogrom broke out, from the fanatical Cyril in 415, who expelled the Jews, while the mob sacked the Jewish quarter.[53] Yet they returned, as, a couple of centuries later, at the conquest by Islam the Jews were expressly allowed to remain, according to the articles of capitulation.[54] During the rule of Islam the position of the Jew has fluctuated like that of the Christian. Restrictive laws have sometimes been passed, as that of El Hakim, ordering Jews to wear bells or to carry a wooden calf,[55] or the later restriction to wearing yellow turbans.[56] Yet Jews have risen to high power, as the slave-dealer who became supreme in the childhood of Ma’add about 1040, and set Sadaka, a renegade Jew, as vizier in 1044.[57] Though in recent times the Oriental Jew has little hold in Egypt, the European Jew has been a moving force in finance and enterprise.