Papyrus Brooklyn

Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446, now in the Brooklyn Museum and probably from Thebes, is an Egyptian legal and household document from the 13th Dynasty, around the reign of Sobekhotep III. One side lists 95 servants belonging to a woman named Senebtisi. Dozens of them are marked "Aamu", Asiatic, and bear West Semitic names; one of the women is called Shiphrah, the same name as one of the two Hebrew midwives who defied Pharaoh in Exodus 1:15. The list often records both the servant's original name and the new Egyptian name given to him or her.

The document shows that Semitic men and women were living and working in Egyptian households, even in Upper Egypt far from the Delta, centuries before the Exodus. It does not mention Israelites, but the renaming of foreign servants echoes Pharaoh giving Joseph the Egyptian name Zaphenath-paneah (Genesis 41:45), and the name Shiphrah shows that the names in the Exodus story fit the period.