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50-573: Thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer named Muhammed al-Samman. The writings in these codices comprise 52 mostly Gnostic treatises , but they also include three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum and a partial translation/alteration of Plato 's Republic . In his introduction to The Nag Hammadi Library in English , James Robinson suggests that these codices may have belonged to

100-651: A dissertation examining the sources utilized in Tertullian 's Adversus Marcionem . He devoted study to several Gnostic systems, particularly Valentinianism . In 1948-1949, Quispel spent a year in Rome as a Bollingen fellow. Quispel served as a visiting professor at Harvard University in 1964-1965 and at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1968. He was engaged in first editing Nag Hammadi Codex I (the "Jung Codex") and devoted attention to

150-645: A document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll , an early form of a book. Papyrus was first known to have been used in Egypt (at least as far back as the First Dynasty ), as the papyrus plant was once abundant across the Nile Delta . It was also used throughout the Mediterranean region. Apart from writing material, ancient Egyptians employed papyrus in

200-571: A first edition of the text had been published. The papyri were finally brought together in Cairo: of the 1945 find, eleven complete books and fragments of two others, 'amounting to well over 1000 written pages', are preserved there. The first edition of a text found at Nag Hammadi was from the Jung Codex, a partial translation of which appeared in Cairo in 1956, and a single extensive facsimile edition

250-842: A group of editors and translators whose express task was to publish a bilingual edition of the Nag Hammadi codices in English, in collaboration with the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California , where Robinson was a faculty member. Robinson was elected secretary of the International Committee for the Nag Hammadi Codices, which had been formed in 1970 by UNESCO and

300-409: A hard surface with their edges slightly overlapping, and then another layer of strips is laid on top at right angles. The strips may have been soaked in water long enough for decomposition to begin, perhaps increasing adhesion, but this is not certain. The two layers possibly were glued together. While still moist, the two layers were hammered together, mashing the layers into a single sheet. The sheet

350-624: A loanword of unknown (perhaps Pre-Greek ) origin. Greek has a second word for it, βύβλος ( byblos ), said to derive from the name of the Phoenician city of Byblos . The Greek writer Theophrastus , who flourished during the 4th century BCE, uses papyros when referring to the plant used as a foodstuff and byblos for the same plant when used for nonfood products, such as cordage, basketry, or writing surfaces. The more specific term βίβλος biblos , which finds its way into English in such words as 'bibliography', 'bibliophile', and 'bible', refers to

400-681: A matter of decades; a 200-year-old papyrus was considered extraordinary. Imported papyrus once commonplace in Greece and Italy has since deteriorated beyond repair, but papyri are still being found in Egypt; extraordinary examples include the Elephantine papyri and the famous finds at Oxyrhynchus and Nag Hammadi . The Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum , containing the library of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus , Julius Caesar 's father-in-law,

450-447: A nearby Pachomian monastery and were buried after Saint Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367 A.D . The Pachomian hypothesis has been further expanded by Lundhaug & Jenott (2015, 2018) and further strengthened by Linjamaa (2024). In his 2024 book, Linjamaa argues that the Nag Hammadi library was used by a small intellectual monastic elite at a Pachomian monastery, and that they were used as

500-618: A smaller part of a much wider Christian library. The contents of the codices were written in the Coptic language . The best-known of these works is probably the Gospel of Thomas , of which the Nag Hammadi codices contain the only complete text. After the discovery, scholars recognized that fragments of these sayings attributed to Jesus appeared in manuscripts discovered at Oxyrhynchus in 1898 ( P. Oxy. 1 ), and matching quotations were recognized in other early Christian sources. Most interpreters date

550-454: Is not a codex, but rather the text of Trimorphic Protennoia , written on "eight leaves removed from a thirteenth book in late antiquity and tucked inside the front cover of the sixth." (Robinson, NHLE, p. 10) Only a few lines from the beginning of Origin of the World are discernible on the bottom of the eighth leaf. Although the manuscripts discovered at Nag Hammadi are generally dated to

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600-442: Is of highly rot-resistant cellulose , but storage in humid conditions can result in molds attacking and destroying the material. Library papyrus rolls were stored in wooden boxes and chests made in the form of statues. Papyrus scrolls were organized according to subject or author and identified with clay labels that specified their contents without having to unroll the scroll. In European conditions, papyrus seems to have lasted only

650-412: Is suggested that the library was initially a simple grave robbing, and the more fanciful aspects of the story were concocted as a cover story. Burials of books were common in Egypt in the early centuries AD, but if the library was a funerary deposit, it conflicts with Robinson's belief that the manuscripts were purposely hidden out of fear of persecution. Instead, Lewis & Blount (2014) have proposed that

700-462: Is used to manufacture items that are sold or used locally. Examples include baskets, hats, fish traps, trays or winnowing mats, and floor mats. Papyrus is also used to make roofs, ceilings, rope, and fences. Although alternatives, such as eucalyptus , are increasingly available, papyrus is still used as fuel. Gilles Quispel Gilles Quispel (30 May 1916 – 2 March 2006) was a Dutch theologian and historian of Christianity and Gnosticism . He

750-680: The Cambridge Antiquarian Society , one of the Papyri Graecae Magicae V, translated into English with commentary in 1853. Papyrus was made in several qualities and prices. Pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville described six variations of papyrus that were sold in the Roman market of the day. These were graded by quality based on how fine, firm, white, and smooth the writing surface was. Grades ranged from

800-587: The Islamic world , which originally learned of it from the Chinese. By the 12th century, parchment and paper were in use in the Byzantine Empire , but papyrus was still an option. Until the middle of the 19th century, only some isolated documents written on papyrus were known, and museums simply showed them as curiosities. They did not contain literary works. The first modern discovery of papyri rolls

850-637: The Leiden University . He then became a secondary school teacher, but soon after went for the university, and he was appointed professor of the history of the early Church at Utrecht University in 1951, at the age of 35. He died in El Gouna , Egypt in 2006 during his holidays. At Leiden, he also began to study theology, which he continued at the University of Groningen . Quispel completed his doctoral work in 1943 at Utrecht University with

900-601: The Merovingian chancery was with a document from 692 A.D., though it was known in Gaul until the middle of the following century. The latest certain dates for the use of papyrus in Europe are 1057 for a papal decree (typically conservative, all papal bulls were on papyrus until 1022), under Pope Victor II , and 1087 for an Arabic document. Its use in Egypt continued until it was replaced by less expensive paper introduced by

950-481: The Nag Hammadi Library and particularly to the Gospel of Thomas throughout the rest of his career. Quispel also made contributions to the study of early "Jewish-Christian" traditions as well as Tatian 's Diatessaron (a second-century gospel harmony). He became emeritus on 1 March 1984. He published five more books afterwards, including a work on Valentinus. Together with J. van Oort , he published

1000-566: The 18th century, a library of ancient papyri was found in Herculaneum , ripples of expectation spread among the learned men of the time. However, since these papyri were badly charred, their unscrolling and deciphering are still going on today. Papyrus was made from the stem of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus . The outer rind was first removed, and the sticky fibrous inner pith is cut lengthwise into thin strips about 40 cm (16 in) long. The strips were then placed side by side on

1050-422: The 4th century, there is some debate regarding the original composition of the texts. Papyrus Papyrus ( / p ə ˈ p aɪ r ə s / pə- PY -rəs ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface . It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus , a wetland sedge . Papyrus (plural: papyri or papyruses ) can also refer to

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1100-526: The Egyptian Ministry of Culture; it was in this capacity that he oversaw the project. A facsimile edition in twelve volumes was published between 1972 and 1977, with subsequent additions in 1979 and 1984 from the publisher Brill Publishers in Leiden , entitled, The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices. This made all the texts available for all interested parties to study in some form. At

1150-535: The Nag Hammadi Library, together with extracts from the heresiological writers, and other gnostic material. It remains, along with The Nag Hammadi Library in English, one of the more accessible volumes of translations of the Nag Hammadi find. It includes extensive historical introductions to individual gnostic groups, notes on translation, annotations to the text, and the organization of tracts into clearly defined movements. Not all scholars agree that

1200-509: The Nag Hammadi codices had been privately commissioned by a wealthy non-monastic individual, and that the books had been buried with him as funerary prestige items. The blood feud, however, is well attested by multiple sources. Slowly, most of the tracts came into the hands of Phokion J. Tanos , a Cypriot antiques dealer in Cairo, and they were thereafter being retained by the Department of Antiquities, for fear that they would be sold out of

1250-513: The codex form, and in the Greco-Roman world, it became common to cut sheets from papyrus rolls to form codices. Codices were an improvement on the papyrus scroll, as the papyrus was not pliable enough to fold without cracking, and a long roll, or scroll, was required to create large-volume texts. Papyrus had the advantage of being relatively cheap and easy to produce, but it was fragile and susceptible to both moisture and excessive dryness. Unless

1300-541: The construction of other artifacts , such as reed boats , mats , rope , sandals , and baskets . Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the third millennium BCE. The earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012 and 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf , an ancient Egyptian harbor located on the Red Sea coast. These documents, the Diary of Merer , date from c.  2560 –2550 BCE (end of

1350-479: The country. After the revolution in 1952, the texts were handed to the Coptic Museum in Cairo, and declared national property. Pahor Labib , the director of the Coptic Museum at that time, was keen to keep the manuscripts in their country of origin. Meanwhile, a single codex had been sold in Cairo to a Belgian antiques dealer . After an attempt was made to sell the codex in both New York City and Paris, it

1400-548: The entire library should be considered Gnostic. Paterson Brown has argued that the three Nag Hammadi Gospels of Thomas, Philip and Truth cannot be so labeled, since each, in his opinion, may explicitly affirm the basic reality and sanctity of incarnate life, which Gnosticism by definition considers illusory. The following table contains a list of codices and tractates in the Nag Hammadi library as given by Aleksandr Leonovich Khosroev  [ ru ] . Abbreviations are from The Coptic Gnostic Library . The so-called "Codex XIII"

1450-484: The inner bark of the papyrus plant. Papyrus is also the etymon of 'paper', a similar substance. In the Egyptian language , papyrus was called wadj ( w3ḏ ), tjufy ( ṯwfy ) , or djet ( ḏt ). The word for the material papyrus is also used to designate documents written on sheets of it, often rolled up into scrolls. The plural for such documents is papyri. Historical papyri are given identifying names – generally

1500-440: The long strip scrolls required, several such sheets were united and placed so all the horizontal fibres parallel with the roll's length were on one side and all the vertical fibres on the other. Normally, texts were first written on the recto , the lines following the fibres, parallel to the long edges of the scroll. Secondarily, papyrus was often reused, writing across the fibres on the verso . One source used for determining

1550-431: The manuscripts; Robinson identified these with Codex XII. Robinson gave multiple accounts of this interview, with the number of people present at the discovery ranging from two to eight. Jean Doresse's account contains none of these elements. Later scholarship has drawn attention to al-Samman's mention of a corpse and a "bed of charcoal" at the site, aspects of the story that were vehemently denied by al-Samman's brother. It

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1600-416: The method by which papyrus was created in antiquity is through the examination of tombs in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes , which housed a necropolis containing many murals displaying the process of papyrus-making. The Roman commander Pliny the Elder also describes the methods of preparing papyrus in his Naturalis Historia . In a dry climate , like that of Egypt, papyrus is stable, formed as it

1650-886: The name of the discoverer, first owner, or institution where they are kept – and numbered, such as " Papyrus Harris I ". Often an abbreviated form is used, such as "pHarris I". These documents provide important information on ancient writings; they give us the only extant copy of Menander , the Egyptian Book of the Dead , Egyptian treatises on medicine (the Ebers Papyrus ) and on surgery (the Edwin Smith papyrus ), Egyptian mathematical treatises (the Rhind papyrus ), and Egyptian folk tales (the Westcar Papyrus ). When, in

1700-615: The papyrus was of perfect quality, the writing surface was irregular, and the range of media that could be used was also limited. Papyrus was gradually overtaken in Europe by a rival writing surface that rose in prominence known as parchment , which was made from animal skins . By the beginning of the fourth century A.D., the most important books began to be manufactured in parchment, and works worth preserving were transferred from papyrus to parchment. Parchment had significant advantages over papyrus, including higher durability in moist climates and being more conducive to writing on both sides of

1750-514: The reign of Khufu ). The papyrus rolls describe the last years of building the Great Pyramid of Giza . For multiple millennia, papyrus was commonly rolled into scrolls as a form of storage. However, at some point late in its history, papyrus began being collected together in the form of codices akin to the modern book. This may have been mimicking the book-form of codices created with parchment . Early Christian writers soon adopted

1800-668: The same time, in the German Democratic Republic , a group of scholars—including Alexander Böhlig, Martin Krause and New Testament scholars Gesine Schenke, Hans-Martin Schenke and Hans-Gebhard Bethge—were preparing the first German language translation of the find. The last three scholars prepared a complete scholarly translation under the auspices of the Berlin Humboldt University , which

1850-408: The superfine Augustan, which was produced in sheets of 13 digits (10 inches) wide, to the least expensive and most coarse, measuring six digits (four inches) wide. Materials deemed unusable for writing or less than six digits were considered commercial quality and were pasted edge to edge to be used only for wrapping. The English word "papyrus" derives, via Latin , from Greek πάπυρος ( papyros ),

1900-488: The surface. The main advantage of papyrus had been its cheaper raw material — the papyrus plant is easy to cultivate in a suitable climate and produces more writing material than animal hides (the most expensive books, made from foetal vellum would take up to dozens of bovine fetuses to produce). However, as trade networks declined, the availability of papyrus outside the range of the papyrus plant became limited and it thus lost its cost advantage. Papyrus' last appearance in

1950-495: The time, dug up the texts from a graveyard in the desert, located near tombs from the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt . In the 1970s, James Robinson sought out the local farmer in question, identifying him as Muhammad ‘Ali al-Samman. Al-Samman told Robinson a complex story involving a blood feud , cannibalism , digging for fresh soil for agricultural use, and superstitions about a jinn . His mother claimed that she burned some of

2000-556: The tourist trade was developed in 1962 by the Egyptian engineer Hassan Ragab using plants that had been reintroduced into Egypt in 1872 from France. Both Sicily and Egypt have centres of limited papyrus production. Papyrus is still used by communities living in the vicinity of swamps, to the extent that rural householders derive up to 75% of their income from swamp goods. Particularly in East and Central Africa, people harvest papyrus, which

2050-527: The wild. During the 1920s, when Egyptologist Battiscombe Gunn lived in Maadi , outside Cairo, he experimented with the manufacture of papyrus, growing the plant in his garden. He beat the sliced papyrus stalks between two layers of linen and produced successful examples of papyrus, one of which was exhibited in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The modern technique of papyrus production used in Egypt for

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2100-578: The writing of the Gospel of Thomas to the second century, but based on much earlier sources. The buried manuscripts date from the 3rd and 4th centuries. The Nag Hammadi codices are now housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo , Egypt . Scholars first became aware of the Nag Hammadi library in 1946. Making careful inquiries from 1947–1950, Jean Doresse discovered that a local farmer, who was a teenager at

2150-545: Was acquired by the Carl Gustav Jung Institute in Zurich in 1951, through the mediation of Gilles Quispel . It was intended as a birthday present for Jung; for this reason, this codex is typically known as the Jung Codex, being Codex I in the collection. Jung's death in 1961 resulted in a quarrel over the ownership of the Jung Codex; the pages were not given to the Coptic Museum in Cairo until 1975, after

2200-570: Was made at Herculaneum in 1752. Until then, the only papyri known had been a few surviving from medieval times. Scholarly investigations began with the Dutch historian Caspar Jacob Christiaan Reuvens (1793–1835). He wrote about the content of the Leyden papyrus , published in 1830. The first publication has been credited to the British scholar Charles Wycliffe Goodwin (1817–1878), who published for

2250-518: Was planned. Due to the difficult political circumstances in Egypt, individual tracts followed from the Cairo and Zurich collections only slowly. This state of affairs did not change until 1966, with the holding of the Messina Congress in Italy . At this conference, intended to allow scholars to arrive at a group consensus concerning the definition of Gnosticism, James M. Robinson assembled

2300-472: Was preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius but has only been partially excavated. Sporadic attempts to revive the manufacture of papyrus have been made since the mid-18th century. Scottish explorer James Bruce experimented in the late 18th century with papyrus plants from Sudan , for papyrus had become extinct in Egypt. Also in the 18th century, Sicilian Saverio Landolina manufactured papyrus at Syracuse , where papyrus plants had continued to grow in

2350-534: Was professor of early Christian history at Utrecht University . Born in Rotterdam , he was the son of a blacksmith from Kinderdijk . He himself was not handy enough to become a blacksmith, and was thus sent to study at the gymnasium . He learned about Plato and gnosis from his teacher of ancient languages. After finishing secondary school in Dordrecht, Quispel studied classical philology from 1934 to 1941 at

2400-635: Was published in 1988. This marks the final stage in the gradual dispersal of gnostic texts into the wider public arena—the full complement of codices was finally available in unadulterated form to people around the world, in a variety of languages. A cross-reference apparatus for Robinson's translation and the Biblical canon also exists. Another English edition was published in 1987, by Yale scholar Bentley Layton , called The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1987). The volume included new translations from

2450-572: Was published in 2001. The James M. Robinson translation was first published in 1977, with the name The Nag Hammadi Library in English , in collaboration between E.J. Brill and Harper & Row . The single-volume publication, according to Robinson, 'marked the end of one stage of Nag Hammadi scholarship and the beginning of another' (from the Preface to the third revised edition). Paperback editions followed in 1981 and 1984, from E.J. Brill and Harper, respectively. A third, completely revised, edition

2500-472: Was then dried under pressure. After drying, the sheet was polished with a rounded object, possibly a stone, seashell , or round hardwood. Sheets, or Mollema, could be cut to fit the obligatory size or glued together to create a longer roll. The point where the Mollema are joined with glue is called the kollesis. A wooden stick would be attached to the last sheet in a roll, making it easier to handle. To form

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