Coptic Museum
The Cairo museum that holds most of the Nag Hammadi codices, the Gnostic library found buried in a jar in 1945.
- Location
- Old Cairo (Coptic Cairo)
- Modern country
- Egypt
- Founded
- 1910, by Marcus Simaika
- Collection
- Coptic Christian art and manuscripts
- Key holdings
- Nag Hammadi codices (found 1945)
What is Coptic Museum known for?
The Coptic Museum in Old Cairo was founded in 1910 by Marcus Simaika to preserve the art and history of Egypt's Coptic Christians. It holds stonework, textiles, icons, metalwork and manuscripts from the late Roman period onward.
Its most famous holdings are the Nag Hammadi codices, a collection of leather-bound papyrus books found in a sealed jar near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945. They contain Coptic translations of more than fifty texts, many of them Gnostic, such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Hypostasis of the Archons. After passing through dealers and antiquities markets, most of the codices were secured by the museum; one, the Jung Codex, went to Zurich before being returned.
The library transformed the study of early Christianity, because most Gnostic writings had previously been known only through their opponents.
The Coptic Museum holds most of the Nag Hammadi library, source of the site's Gnostic texts.
Mentioned on these pages
- Rabbit holeNag Hammadi library
- PersonMuhammad Ali al-Samman
Sources
- Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, 'The Coptic Museum: Our story'Reference
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'The Nag Hammadi Library'Reference
- Wikipedia, 'Coptic Museum'Reference
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