Image Details

Sonia Halliday

Steep cliffs line the Nile near Nag Hammadi, Egypt. In 1945 two Arab brothers digging for mineral-rich fertilizer (sebakh) at the base of the cliffs discovered a large, sealed, earthenware jar containing 52 different texts bound in 12 volumes (compare with photo of 12 volumes and photo of Charles W. Hedrick). The documents were written in Coptic, the language of Christian Egypt. The texts make up a heretical Christian library associated with Gnosticism (from the Greek for “knowledge” because they claimed to have secret knowledge about Jesus).