Receipt for a Grain Loan Late PeriodElephantine, Egypt
Description
Object Label: In the fifth century B.C.E., Egypt’s Elephantine Island was home to Egyptians, Persians, and Jews. This document comes from the archive of a Jewish family whose first language was Aramaic rather than Egyptian. It states that in December 402 B.C.E., Ananiah, son of Haggai, borrowed two monthly rations of grain from Pakhnum, son of Besa, an Aramaean with an Egyptian name. This receipt would have been kept by Pakhnum and returned to Ananiah when he repaid the loan. No interest is charged on the loan, but there is a penalty for failing to repay it on the appointed date. Catalogue description: Culture Aramaic Caption: Aramaic. Receipt for a Grain Loan, December, 402 B.C.E.. Papyrus, ink, mud, a: Object: 11 13/16 × 13 3/4 in. (30 × 35 cm) a: Frame: 14 15/16 × 16 1/4 in. (38 × 41.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Theodora Wilbour from the collection of her father, Charles Edwin Wilbour, 47.218.93a-b. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
A machine reading of the photograph made Jul 2026: deities, names, signs and a description as the model saw them. Not curatorial; treat it as the model's best reading, not authority.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 47.218.93a-b tier-2
- BKM-Object 60732 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.