Governor Ahzai

Ahzai, like Yeho'ezer, is known only from archaeology: jar-handle impressions from Ramat Rahel, south of Jerusalem, read "belonging to Ahzai the governor" (l'ḥzy pḥw'). His name is probably a short form of Ahaziah, "YHWH has grasped." Nothing else is recorded about his term of office.

Ahzai belongs to a short list of Persian-period governors of Yehud recovered from seals, stamps, papyri and coins: Elnathan, Yeho'ezer, Bagohi (named in an Elephantine papyrus of −407), and Yehezqiyah, whose tiny silver coins read "Yehezqiyah the governor." Scholars dispute whether Ahzai served before Nehemiah or, as this timeline places him, in the last decades before Alexander the Great's conquest in −332. An Ahzai also appears in a priestly genealogy in Nehemiah 11:13, but nothing shows it is the same man.