History and find spot:
The papyrus P. BM EA 10415, was purchased by Henry Salt (1780-1827), British Consul General of Egypt, most probably from an antiquities trader in Luxor (year is not known) for his collection. In 1821 Salt resold this papyrus to the British Museum. The fact that Salt moved to Egypt as an accredited Consul General in 1816 implies that the purchase of the papyrus must have taken place between 1816 and 1821.
P. BM EA 10415 shows on both sides a Demotic inscription, which is to be assigned to the group of funerary texts which are summarized under the term 'letter for breathing (tꜣ šꜥ.t n snsn)' (Vleeming, Mummy labels (Short Texts II)Vleeming, S., Demotic and Greek-Demotic mummy labels and other short texts (Short Texts II; Studia Demotica 9; Leuven, 2012)., 639-646 (no. 1097-1101), 674-699, (no. 1144-1157), 779-792 (synoptic translation); Scalf, Passport to EternityScalf, F.D., Passport to Eternity. Formulaic Demotic Funerary Texts and the Final Phase of Egyptian Funerary Literature in Roman Egypt (Chicago, 2014).). According to Vleeming, op.cit., 674-675, Smith, Traversing eternitySmith, M., Traversing eternity. Texts for the afterlife from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt (Oxford, 2009)., 558-559, and Scalf, op.cit., 106-111, this text group can be dated in all probability to the 2^nd century AD and very likely originates from the larger area of Thebes.
Materiality:
The papyrus sheet has the typical vertical rectangular letter layout (transversa charta).All margins are largely preserved. The maximum height of the papyrus is approx. 23 cm, its maximum width is 10.5 cm.
Textlayout:
P. BM EA 10415 was inscribed as palimpsest (traces of a first inscription on both sides) and has the letter layout typical for this text group in transversa charta. The recto (verso of the papyrus sheet) is subdivided into three sections by double horizontal lines. At the top there is a vignette, below that a line in hieroglyphic script and below that the 11 lines of the demotic text of the 'letter for breathing (tꜣ šꜥ.t n snsn)', which is limited by a single horizontal line. On the verso (recto of the papyrus), the address of the recipient is written rotated by 90° to the direction of the main text. The address here is not an ordinary epistolary address, but rather an indication of the destination of use: in the netherworld before Osiris (Scalf, Passport to EternityScalf, F.D., Passport to Eternity. Formulaic Demotic Funerary Texts and the Final Phase of Egyptian Funerary Literature in Roman Egypt (Chicago, 2014)., 94).
Vignette:
Of the 46 formulaic texts that make part of the text type 'letter for breathing (tꜣ šꜥ.t n snsn)', 16 are illustrated. The vignette of P. BM EA 10415 rto, belongs to the iconographic type of the 'presentation before Osiris'. In the centre of the scene, an offering table is sketched. The right half of the scene shows Anubis (right), who presents a male figure (as living person) in a long rope standing in front of him to Osiris and (in all probability) Isis, who are shown sitting on the left side of the offering table (Scalf, Passport to EternityScalf, F.D., Passport to Eternity. Formulaic Demotic Funerary Texts and the Final Phase of Egyptian Funerary Literature in Roman Egypt (Chicago, 2014)., 150-167, esp. 155-156 Fig.3.3, 354 Pl.2).
Hieroglyphic line:
The hieroglyphic inscription line is difficult to read and it is disputed whether this is not a pseudo-hieroglyphic or ornamental-hieroglyphic text (so Stadler, in: Res Severa Verum GaudiumStadler, M., 'Fünf neue funeräre Kurztexte (Papyri Britisches Museum EA 10121, 10198, 10415, 10421a, b, 10426a) und eine Zwischenbilanz zu dieser Textgruppe', in: Hoffmann, F. / Thissen, H.-J. (Hgg.), Res Severa Verum Gaudium. Festschrift für Karl-Theodor Zauzich zum 65. Geburtstag am 8. Juni 2004 (Studia Demotica 6; Leuven, 2004), 551-571., 557-558; Vleeming, Mummy labels (Short Texts II)Vleeming, S., Demotic and Greek-Demotic mummy labels and other short texts (Short Texts II; Studia Demotica 9; Leuven, 2012)., [1150] 688; Vittmann, P. BM 10415, in: TLAVittmann, G., P. BM 10415, in: Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae. Berlin-Brandendurgische Akademie der Wissenschaften - Strukturen und Transformationen des Wortschatzes der ägyptischen Sprache. Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz - Demotische Textdatenbank.). For an approximate attempt at a reading: Scalf, Passport to EternityScalf, F.D., Passport to Eternity. Formulaic Demotic Funerary Texts and the Final Phase of Egyptian Funerary Literature in Roman Egypt (Chicago, 2014)., 118.
Demotic text:
The scribe of the demotic text, who also inscribed the vignette and the hieroglyphic line, is not named. Even if some palaeographic differences between the scribal character of the text of the 'letter for breathing' (recto) and the address (verso) are to be noticed, it is still the same scribe who, however, used a different writing tool on the recto than on the verso (here finer). The text of the recto is written with a quick, but neat hand. It has numerous careless errors and omissions (lines 3, 4, 10, 11, 12; cf. note there). Furthermore, the lemma mn is found instead of the writing of the recipient's personal name, as well as that of his filiation (here with indication of the mother), which is used especially in the creation of text templates to substitute the proper name mentions. It can therefore be presumed with a high certainty that P. BM EA 10415 is a template of a 'letter for breathing', compiled by the scribe based on some textual witnesses of this type.
In this context, reference should be made to the 'letter for breathing' of P. Strasbourg BN dem. 270 (TM 117640; Vleeming, Mummy labels (Short Texts II)Vleeming, S., Demotic and Greek-Demotic mummy labels and other short texts (Short Texts II; Studia Demotica 9; Leuven, 2012)., [1200] 733-735; Scalf, Passport to EternityScalf, F.D., Passport to Eternity. Formulaic Demotic Funerary Texts and the Final Phase of Egyptian Funerary Literature in Roman Egypt (Chicago, 2014)., 148 (Text Nr. 43), cf. 119 n.205; Vittmann, P. BM 10415, in: TLAVittmann, G., P. BM 10415, in: Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae. Berlin-Brandendurgische Akademie der Wissenschaften - Strukturen und Transformationen des Wortschatzes der ägyptischen Sprache. Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz - Demotische Textdatenbank.; Smith, Traversing eternitySmith, M., Traversing eternity. Texts for the afterlife from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt (Oxford, 2009)., 558-559). In the wording of the 'letter for breathing' but also of the address, this papyrus shows such clear and close parallels to P. BM EA 10415 that it has so far been attributed to the same scribe in the literature. This could not be verified paleographically here, as only a facsimile is currently available. However, it shows a great similarity in the hand's ductus. If the assumption that both papyri can be attributed to the same scribe is correct, the template of P. BM EA 10415 could have served as a sample or draft for the P. Strasbourg BN dem. 270. The slight differences in content and the partially more detailed orthography of P. Strasbourg BN dem. 270, which are noticeable in comparison to P. BM EA 10415, are then probably due to the final editing.