volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

" Find " of Dated Coptic MSS. at EdfA 371
in the Nitrian Desert to Pacho in Paris. This man told
me that the Greek Bible on vellum did exist, and that
his dead friend had buried it somewhere under his house
shortly before his death, because he was afraid of getting
into trouble with the Service of Antiquities should they
find it in his possession. He professed not to know
what had become of the two volumes containing the
Greek commentaries and the Peshitti Version of the Old
Testament, but I heard subsequently that he had sold
them to the Monastery of Jabal Katarina on Sinai. The
fourth volume, he said, he still had, and after much
delay he produced it. As soon as I saw the volume I
recognized at once the characteristic binding, and, having
turned over the foUos, I felt certain that the manuscript
was written in the Nitrian Desert in the seventh or eighth
century. After much talk and coffee-drinking I took
possession of it, and it is now in the British Museum.^
In 1907 the dealers in Upper Egjrpt formed themselves
into a company, and under an arrangement with
Maspero they continued the excavations which I began
in 1903, and discovered many good Coptic inscriptions.
Best of all, they succeeded in finding the place in the
neighbouring hUls where the monks of Edfu and Asna
had hidden their manuscripts, probably when the Arabs
under Al-Yazuri ravaged Upper Egypt between 1153
and 1158. Here they discovered a large number of
manuscripts written in the Coptic dialect of Upper Egypt
and one small manuscript written in Nubian. Some of
the company of dealers sold the MSS. which were their
shares of the " find " to a gentleman who resold them
to the British Museum, and I acquired the remaining
thirteen volumes in 1907-8. Among the Apocryphal
works contained in these volumes may be mentioned
the " Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ " by
Saint Bartholomew, the Apocalypse of St. Paul, and
^ Oriental No. 6714. Its contents are : (i) The Book of Gifts,
by Mar Shubhkha le-Maran ; (2) A Homily on the Ascetic Life, by
Abraham of Nephtar ; (3) A Story of Christian Persecution by Bar
Khadh-be-shabba ; (4) A Homily of Theodore of Mopsuestia against
the Disciples of Macedonius.
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