Brooklyn Papyrus 35.1446

Six Hundred Fragments In A Collector's House

C. E. Wilbour, the American collector whose purchases also brought a large part of the Elephantine Papyri to Brooklyn, bought this papyrus in Egypt at some point between 1881 and 1896, probably at Thebes. It was still in his effects when he died in 1896. His collection reached the Brooklyn Museum in 1916 as a gift from his children, honouring the wishes of their mother Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, but the material stayed in the family home until 1935 - which is why this papyrus carries a 1935 accession number. When the museum finally came to work on it, the document was in something like six hundred fragments. Reassembly took from 1950 to 1952. W. C. Hayes published the whole of it in 1955, and that edition is still the standard.

The recto is administrative: royal correspondence addressed to the vizier Ankhu, and a register of around eighty Egyptians who had absconded from the state institution usually rendered the Great Prison, each with a name, a father's name and a note of status. The verso is the part that draws attention. It records the transfer of ninety-five household servants to Senebtisi, the widow of the vizier Resseneb, who was Ankhu's son. The document as a whole belongs to the late Middle Kingdom, running from the reign of Amenemhat III into the Thirteenth Dynasty; the Brooklyn Museum dates it c. 1809-1743 BC.

Semitic Names In An Egyptian Household

Of the ninety-five servants on Senebtisi's list, forty-five are designated aamu - the same Egyptian word for West Semitic foreigners that labels the travellers on the Beni Hasan Tomb Painting - and around thirty carry names identifiable as Northwest Semitic, several of them built on the divine elements El, Baal and Reshef. That is close to half of one wealthy Egyptian household described as foreign.

Stated at exactly its own weight, this is worth a great deal. Semitic-speaking people from the Levant were living and working inside Egyptian households in numbers in the late Middle Kingdom, in domestic service, some of them with real responsibility. And the list records something more particular still: a servant entered under a foreign name is regularly given an Egyptian name as well, introduced by a standard formula meaning "who is called." That is precisely what happens to Joseph in Genesis 41:45, where Pharaoh renames him Zaphenath-Paneah. So the picture Genesis paints - a Semite from Canaan bought into an Egyptian official's house, given charge of it, and carrying two names - is an ordinary picture of that period rather than an odd one. Whether the narrative that paints it was written early or late is a separate question, and this papyrus does not touch it. What the document gives is not the confirmation of an event but the demonstration that the setting is real.

One name on the list, transliterated Šp-ra, is spelled the way the Hebrew Bible spells Shiphrah, one of the two midwives who defied the king of Egypt in Exodus 1.

Why This Is Not Evidence Of Hebrew Slaves

The papyrus is regularly offered as documentary proof of Hebrew slaves in Egypt, and the case has named advocates rather than only anonymous ones. D. Rohl put it into wide circulation, and T. Kennedy has pressed it hardest: that around thirty of the servants carry Semitic names, and that up to ten of those are specifically Hebrew. That is the version worth answering, and it is not the version the document supports. Hayes called these people Asiatics; the Brooklyn Museum still does; the Egyptian word is aamu, and it covers the whole West Semitic world without distinguishing anyone inside it. Nothing in the document connects any person on it to the family of Jacob.

The strongest single item in the case is a name transliterated Hy-ab-rw, read as an Egyptian spelling of "Hebrew." It has an older and better answer. W. F. Albright, who published the standard analysis of these names in 1954, vocalised it Hay-abi-ilu - "Where is my father, O El?" - an ordinary Canaanite personal name with Amorite and Ugaritic cognates, and etymologically unrelated to the Hebrew word ivri. A name that resembles a word is not the word, and the man who did the philology on this list is not a hostile witness: Albright spent his career arguing for the historical substance of the patriarchal traditions.

The same goes for Shiphrah. It is one name among about thirty Semitic names in a single household list, in a language whose personal names were shared across the entire Levant. The midwife of Exodus 1 is separated from this household servant by centuries on any exodus chronology, by the length of Egypt, and by the whole distance between private domestic service in Thebes and a Hebrew community in the Delta. Finding the name here establishes that the name was current in that language at that time, which is genuinely worth knowing, and is not an identification of a person.

The dates narrow the claim rather than destroying it, and the distinction matters. Evangelical scholars themselves take different views of when the exodus happened - an early date of about 1446 BC and a late date of about 1260 BC each have serious defenders, and the argument is not settled inside the tradition, let alone outside it. On the early date, with the four hundred and thirty years of Exodus 12:40 behind it, Israel is in Egypt across this whole period, so the papyrus is not too early for the sojourn. It is simply too early, by centuries, for anything Exodus 1 narrates, and it does not name Israelites in any case.

The two halves of the document also need keeping apart. The verso is a private transfer of household staff. The recto is a register of people who had run from a state institution, and flight from compulsory state work is a real Middle Kingdom phenomenon that this papyrus does document - so it will not do to say the text has nothing to do with forced labour. What it does not do is match Exodus 1:11, which describes conscripted brick-work for store-cities named Pithom and Raamses, and its fugitives are listed as Egyptians. The document has no excavation context at all: it was bought on the antiquities market, and its findspot is a probability rather than a record.

What is left after all that is still substantial, and it is the thing to say. In the right general period, Northwest Semitic people were in Egyptian households in large numbers, doing the kind of work Genesis describes Joseph doing, and taking Egyptian names alongside their own as he did. That claim is smaller than the one made for this papyrus online, and unlike that one, it is true.

Scripture references

• Genesis 37:36 — Joseph sold into Egypt, into Potiphar's household
• Genesis 39:1-6 — A Semitic servant given charge of an Egyptian official's whole house
• Genesis 41:45 — Pharaoh gives Joseph an Egyptian name - the practice this list records
• Exodus 1:11 — State conscript labour on Pithom and Raamses - a different institution entirely
• Exodus 1:15 — Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives

Sources

• Holding institutionBrooklyn Museum: Portion of a Historical Text (35.1446a-e) — Brooklyn Museum, New York · The holding museum's own object record. The page refuses automated requests and could not be read directly when this article was written; the accession number, the c. 1809-1743 BC range and the museum's use of the term Asiatic are taken from the record as it is quoted elsewhere, and the substantive claims below rest on Hayes's editionSupports: The accession number, the holding institution and the museum's date range for the document
• ScholarshipW. C. Hayes, A Papyrus of the Late Middle Kingdom in the Brooklyn Museum — William C. Hayes · Brooklyn Museum, 1955. The first and still standard full edition, transcription and analysis of Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446. Print onlySupports: The contents of recto and verso, the count of ninety-five servants and forty-five Asiatics, the practice of entering an Egyptian name alongside a foreign one (pp. 99-102), the reading Šp-ra, and the consistent use of the designation Asiatic
• ScholarshipW. F. Albright, Northwest-Semitic Names in a List of Egyptian Slaves from the Eighteenth Century B.C. — William Foxwell Albright · Journal of the American Oriental Society 74.4 (1954), 222-233. The standard philological treatment of the Semitic names on this list. Paywalled · paywalledSupports: The vocalisation of Hy-ab-rw as Hay-abi-ilu, "Where is my father, O El?", with Amorite and Ugaritic cognates, and its unrelatedness to the Hebrew word ivri
• ReferenceWikipedia: Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 — Used for the acquisition dates, the 1916 gift and the 1935 transfer, the roughly six hundred fragments, and the 1950-1952 reassemblySupports: The collection history and physical condition on arrival
• EncyclopediaWikipedia: Resseneb (son of Ankhu)Supports: The identification of Senebtisi as the widow of the vizier Resseneb, son of the vizier Ankhu

Reflect

Forty-five foreign names, written down because somebody needed to prove who owned them. What does it do to you to read a list of people recorded only as property?