I. General

Nag Hammadi is an Upper Egyptian industrial town on the west bank of the Nile, about 125 km downstream from Luxor. At nearby Jabal al-Tarif, in December 1945 a peasant accidentally found, in a jug deposited in a cave, twelve codices from the first half of the 4th century ce and the remains of another, with much original evidence of Gnosis, and further texts in the Coptic language. The …