Black and red

Before we dive into the content, let us first have a closer look at the object itself. The text is written on papyrus, a commonly used writing material in ancient Egypt. Papyrus was made from the papyrus plant, which was cultivated in the Nile Delta region.

The surface of our papyrus is inscribed with hieratic script. Hieratic is an ancient Egyptian cursive script, which is derived from the earlier Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system. Its cursive forms made hieratic much more suited for writing on papyrus than the formal Egyptian hieroglyphs, which were generally used for carved and painted inscriptions.

Most of our papyrus is written in black ink, but some words are written in red, which we call ‘rubrics’ (Latin ruber = red). These rubrics may indicate the beginning of a new section.

Let us now turn to the story.