Northwest Semitic Incantations in an Egyptian Medical Papyrus of the Fourteenth Century B. C. E.

Abstract

THE London Medical Papyrus, published seventy years ago by W. Wreszinski,' contains a number of short Northwest Semitic magical texts transcribed into hieratic syllabic script (group writing).2 The only attempts I know of to decipher any of these texts have been by Egyptologists;3 Semitists seem to have ignored them entirely.4 This neglect is quite undeserved, since the papyrus in question is early by Northwest Semitic standards (fourteenth century B.C.E.)5 and since the Egyptian syllabic script is, in many ways, more informative than the native scripts of the Northwest Semitic languages. So far as I know, these incantations have the distinction of being the earliest Semitic texts written in an Egyptian script.6 The Amorite material in the Execration Texts, etc.,7 is much earlier, but it consists solely of names. The Northwest Semitic texts in the