Fragments of world’s oldest Christian manuscript found in Egyptian monastery

Fragments of the earliest dated Christian literary manuscript have been found at Deir al-Surian, an ancient monastery in the Egyptian desert. Dating from 411 AD, these were discovered under a collapsed floor of a ninth-century tower. The fragments are from the final page of a codex written in Syriac (an Eastern Aramaic language) which was acquired by the British Museum library in the 19th century.

Few manuscripts have had such an astonishing history. In 1847, British Museum librarian William Cureton said that “among all the curiosities of literature, I know of none more remarkable than the fate of this matchless volume”. We can now add a final chapter to the story.

HERE

What a great story.