Rare Egyptian leather manuscript reconstructed

[Duncan Head]

Not military, but interesting:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/215/sep/17/ancient-manuscript-cairo-museum-find-leather-4000-years-book-of-the-dead

A leather manuscript more than 4,000 years old has been painstakingly reconstructed by a scholar after it was rediscovered in the Egyptian museum in Cairo.

Containing religious spells as well as colourful depictions of divine and supernatural beings, predating those found in the Book of the Dead manuscripts, the leather roll is around 2.5 metres long, with text and drawings on both sides. It is both the longest surviving leather ancient Egyptian manuscript and the oldest, according to Egyptologist Dr Wael Sherbiny, who found the roll in a mix of small and large fragments on the Cairo Museum's shelves and announced his discovery at the International Congress of Egyptologists in Florence in August.
...
He dates the roll to between 2,300 BC and 2,000 BC, from the late Old Kingdom up to the early Middle Kingdom, and says it contains many new religious texts, including a large pictorial-textual segment from the so-called Book of Two Ways, known from the floorboard decorations of Middle Kingdom coffins, as well as religious spells formulated in the first-person singular, probably intended for recitation by a priest.
...
Sherbiny ... is now preparing the manuscript for publication.

[Patrick Waterson]

This is good not just for its content but also for the confirmation that Egyptians did write on hides for a good part of their recorded history and that such hides can survive.

I dream of Thutmose III's campaign diaries on hide rolls (referred to in  his hieroglyphic texts) resurfacing ...