Nash Papyrus

[1] Twenty-four lines long, with a few letters missing at each edge, the papyrus contains the Ten Commandments in Hebrew and a short middle text, followed by the start of the Shema Yisrael prayer.

Some (but not all) of the papyrus' substitutions from Deuteronomy are also found in the version of Exodus in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Pentateuch from the 3rd–2nd centuries BCE, made in Alexandria.

[citation needed] The papyrus preamble before Shema Yisrael, also found in the Septuagint, is taken from Deuteronomy 4:45, which is the only time the recurring formula "This is the commandment(s) and rules and teachings..." mentions the Exodus from Egypt.

As Burkitt put it, "it is therefore reasonable to conjecture that this Papyrus contains the daily worship of a pious Egyptian Jew, who lived before the custom came to an end".

[3] It is thus believed that the papyrus probably consisted of a liturgical document, specifically the constituents of a Phylactery,[1] which may have purposely synthesised the two versions of the Commandments, rather than directly from Scripture.