Of these groups, the Books of Kings records that they "would venerate the Lord [YHWH] but serve their own gods according to the practices of the nations from which they had been exiled," which is consistent with the polytheism expressed in Amherst 63.

[8] Amherst 63 was probably dictated in the early third century BC by an Aramaic-speaking Jewish priest to an Egyptian scribe with fourth-century training.

The compilation, however, probably post-dates 701 BC, when Sennacherib's campaign in the Levant forced many Samarians to take refuge in Aram, leading to the displacement of Hebrew by Aramaic.

The last tale on the papyrus refers to the death of Šamaš-šuma-ukin in 648 BC and must have been added after that date if the entire corpus was not put together later.

[10] Van der Toorn argues circumstantially it may have been compiled for the inauguration of a renovated temple of Nabu in the city of Palmyra in the seventh century.

[11] Holm counters there's no use of the name of the city in the text, no evidence at all from Palmyra in the period, and, citing "mistakes" and "awkwardness" in the identification, disputes van der Toorn's location-based divisions.

[19][20] Van der Toorn thought some Mar references might have been added later by an imagined Aramean editor, since they seemed "burdensome" of the poem.

[23] O crescent (lit., bow) / bowman in heaven, Sahar / shine forth;[24][25] send your emissary from the temple of Arash,[26] and from Zephon may Horus help us.

It had remained a mystery, because its demotic script did not encode Egyptian, (save some loan words[32]) until Raymond Bowman identified it as Aramaic on the basis of photographs in 1944.