The Nag Hammadi Library

A collection of Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer named Muhammed al-Samman. The writings in these codices comprised fifty-two mostly Gnostic treatises, but they also include three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum and a partial translation/alteration of Plato's Republic. The discovery of these texts significantly influenced modern scholarship into early Christianity and Gnosticism. The best-known of these works is probably the Gospel of Thomas, of which the Nag Hammadi codices contain the only complete text. The buried manuscripts date from the 3rd and 4th centuries. The Nag Hammadi codices are currently housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt.