Nash Papyrus

The oldest Fragmentary text we had prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was the Nash Papyrus.

The Nash Papyrus is a segmented papyrus manuscript found in Egypt in 1898 by W.L.Nash. It is thought it came from the Fayyum though its provenance is not entirely known. It is dated to 150 - 100BC and was the oldest Hebrew manuscript at the time until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It contains the Ten Commandments and the Shema Yisrael. At one point it was customary to say the Ten Commandments before the Shema Yisrael and thus it is thought that this fragment was made for this purpose