P. GEM 66796 and P. GEM 66797 were found together in a tomb in Illahun in 2009 by an Egyptian archaeological mission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The tomb was described by the excavators as belonging to a craftsman and was dated to the Third Intermediate Period. The papyri were originally stored in the Kom-Aushim magazine, with the inventory numbers 91 and 92; they were subsequently moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum on 18 May 2016 and given the new inventory numbers of P. GEM 66796 and P. GEM 66977. During the same excavations, a further find was made of another group of fragmentary hieratic, late cursive hieratic and demotic papyri, but details of precisely where they were discovered are not yet available. These papyri show a number of similarities with the hand of P. GEM 66796.