Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Bob Becking on Papyrus Amherst 63

The following excerpts are from:

 

Bob Becking, Identity in Persian Egypt: The Fate of the Yehudite Community of Elephantine (University Park, Pa.: Eisenbrauns, 2020)

 

[Papyrus Amherst 63] dates from the late fourth century BCE but whose traditions go back earlier to a multiethnic community situated in the “fortress of palms” (or, as I alternately read it, “oasis in the desert”) in the seventh century BCE. (xii)

 

This papyrus was found in Egypt, though its specific provenance is unknown, and the Demotic text can be dated to the late fourth century BCE. The contents, however, reflect a syncretistic form of religion from an earlier age. (p. 148)

 

it can safely be assumed that the text stems from a period between the end of the reign of Assurbanipal and the Persian conquest of the ancient Near East. (p. 149)

 

Since the Tale of Two Brothers in Papyrus Amherst 63 is obviously dependent on the description of the deeds and doings of Ashurbanipal in his Royal inscriptions, a date in the seventh century of this fifth section can be assumed; see Kottsieper, “Die literarische Aufnahme assyrischer Begebenheiten,” 283–89; van der Toorn, Papyrus Amherst 63, 37 (Ibid., 149 n. 15)