The Common Origin of the Aramaicized Prayer to Horus and of Psalm 20

Abstract

Papyrus Amherst 63 contains a series of texts in Demotic script but in the Aramaic language. Recently, two teams of scholars have published a section of the papyrus containing a prayer to the god Horus bearing a remarkable similarity to Hebrew Psalm 20, and they and others have suggested how these two compositions are related. Although this section represents only a small part of the papyrus, it is of prime importance for understanding the religious and mythopoeic background of the group that produced the papyrus. This study offers a new translation and analysis of the prayer and suggests that the prayer was originally written in Hebrew and subsequently Aramaicized superficially. It also proposes a new reconstruction of its literary history that clarifies the prayer's relationship to the Israelite liturgical composition and casts additional light on the background of the group that produced the papyrus.