Tabloids Revive an Old Claim That an Ancient Egyptian Text Mentions Bible Giants

An article in the New York Post went viral yesterday for claiming an Egyptian papyrus supposedly is proof that the Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 were real flesh-and-blood giants. The Post piece from Sunday summarizes a Daily Mail article from earlier in the day breathlessly reporting the contents of Papyrus Anastasi I, an Egyptian papyrus scroll found in 1839 and translated into English in 1911 (several partial translations, and a full translation taken from a German edition, had previously appeared). While the reports call it a “lost” scroll that had just been “rediscovered,” the text is well-known and is frequently discussed in academic literature. It will surprise no one to discover that the claims for Bible giants in the Egyptian text are overblown.

​The scroll received renewed attention this week because the Associates for Biblical Research posted a discussion of it to its website. The scroll has been used in Biblical apologetics for decades as confirmation of both Genesis 6:4 and Biblical references to the Sheshai, a tribe descended from ‘Anak, who are assumed to be giants because Numbers 13:33 calls the inhabitants of the land descendants of the Nephilim.
 
The text, which Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner translated more than a century ago, makes a single reference to the Shasu (or Shosu) people of Canaan as being between six-foot-ten and eight-foot-six: “The(?) narrow defile is infested(?) with Shosu concealed beneath the bushes; some of them are of four cubits or of five cubits, from head(??) to foot(?), fierce of face, their heart is not mild, and they hearken not to coaxing. Thou art alone, there is no helper(?) with thee, no army behind thee.”
 
The text, however, is not intended as a serious ethnographic account. Gardiner himself noted that the Egyptians often exaggerated the size of their enemies. The papyrus, moreover, was a satirical text used in the training of scribes. In 1885, Adolf Erman published an analysis showing, in Gardiner’s words, that “the real subject of the book was lucidly and convincingly proved to be a literary controversy between two scribes, the form adopted being that of a letter pretending to be the answer to an ill-worded and pretentious communication.” The scribe Hori wrote a letter mocking his friend Amenemope for his poor scholarship and offering tips for doing better. The text itself is full of satirical and humorous elements and exaggeration.
 
That said, there is some evidence that the Shasu were sometimes imagined to be tall(ish) people somewhat bigger than the Egyptians. Although most surviving Egyptian references make no mention of any special height, a relief carving of the Battle of Kadesh depicts the Shasu spies as larger than the Egyptians, who are beating them. But the relief is difficult to take literally since the pharaoh, in the same carving, is depicted as twice their height—which is to say, the carving uses hieratic scale, not a literal depiction of height.
 
The Shasu’s status as tall was part of a widespread literary conceit at the time describing fierce or savage opponents as large, equating physical size with ferocity and barbarism. It should come as no surprise that there are no surviving skeletons of Shasu people measuring eight feet.
 
This is not the first time the Papyrus Anastasi I has been roped into Biblical controversy. F. J. Lauthe claimed in 1868 that it was an actual letter written by Moses! More seriously, an Egyptian inscription referring to the “Land of the Shasu yhw” led some scholars to conclude that the Shasu were actually the original worshippers of Yahweh, or even the earliest pre-Israelites—a startling reversal of the popular claim that they are evil Nephilim, sinful sons of fallen angels!