Pap. Cairo EM JdE 43473

The language and orthography is somewhat unusal. Note that line 3 spells הושרתי, with a final yod. This is not expected. Apart from Yahôyišmaˁ, who is paired with a female with an Egyptian divine name, Taḥnûm, the names are general NWS. The phrase זי עליכי is rather curious, and difficult to understand in the context of a greetings. Is the lost noun an object the mistress is wearing? Is the now a group of people, in which case we have a heirarchical prepositional meaning "over you"? The latter seems more likely in a greeting, but does it have precident? Cowley shared this confusion (p. 139). The syntax seems strange as well. If our reading of line 1 is correct, why would one write: Subj. nomen regens verb obj obj ? Similarly, line 4 say/said to me Yaˀûš, rather than Subj verb indObj. If the inf לאמר is used like the quotative particle למ then it may be post positive. "[PN] said to me, saying "Yaˀûš, give in gold". The physical traits are bit surprising. It does not seem to have been folded in half then rolled into its original package-form, in which case we would expect the bottom, rather than the top of the letter to survive. It seems it may have been folded in reverse order and stored. My guess is that it was first folded in half, longways then rolled from top to bottom. The outside rows of papyrus deteriorated and we are left with the top of the letter. r 1: שלוה: Cowley postulated that it may be the same as סלוה (p. 138). r 2: Cowley reconstructs שלמ ברה ו ברת with seems plausible to me. It was not adopted by TAD. r 3: Cowley translated כלכליה as "everybody" calling the form "strange" and suggesting it is "popular" (p. 139). Cowley's suggestion that √ירש means here to ratify a document is unnecessary (p. 139). r 4: a resonable reconstruction is "to me"