Endnote 27 – The Patriarchal Age: Myth or History?

The Egyptian Story of Sinuhe is set about 1940 B.C., and we have manuscripts from the 19th/18th centuries B.C., as well as later manuscripts. One Ramesside manuscript (c. 1250 B.C.) substitutes the “new” Semitic loanword yam (meaning “sea”) for the old word nwy—which dates that manuscript, but not the original story (John W. B. Barnes, The Ashmolean Ostracon of Sinuhe (Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1952).)