THE MORGAN LIBRARY MUSEUM/ART RESOURCE, NY

ENIGMATIC PAPYRUS ROLL. The decipherment of P. Amherst 63 has been a long and painful process of trial and error. Written in Demotic, a cursive script derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, this manuscript sheds new light on the Israelite religion and history of the Hebrew Bible. The cultic song contained in column XII, pictured here, is strinkingly similar to the Biblical Psalm 20.