Papyrus Anastasi VI

BM 10245

Ancient Near East · c. 1213-1203 BCE

An Egyptian hieratic papyrus from the reign of Merneptah (ca. 1213-1203 BCE) containing administrative correspondence on a variety of subjects. Lines 54-56 record permission granted by Egyptian officials for tribes of the “Shasu of Edom” to bring their herds west into Egyptian-controlled pasturage near the eastern Delta. The text confirms that Egyptian scribes associated the Shasu, the mobile pastoralist population of the southern Levant, with the territory later known to the Hebrew Bible as Edom.

1From an administrative communication recording the movement of pastoralist tribes during the reign of Merneptah.[1] Lines 54-56: We have finished passing the tribes (mhwt) of the Shasu of Edom through the Fortress of Merneptah-Hotephirma, L.P.H. in Theku, to the pools of Pithom, of Merneptah-Hotephirma in Theku, in order to sustain them and their herds in the domain of Pharaoh, L.P.H., the good Sun of every land.

Glossary