The Gospel of Philip by Unknown Nag Hammadi

Muhammad’s mother, ‘Umm-Ahmad, admits that she burned much of the papyrus in the oven along with the straw she used to kindle the fire.Ī few weeks later, as Muhammad ‘Ali tells it, he and his brothers avenged their father’s death by murdering the man who had killed him, Ahmed Isma ‘il. When he returned to his home in al-Qasr, Muhammad ‘Ali dumped the books and loose papyrus leaves on the straw piled on the ground next to the oven.

But thinking that it might also contain gold, he raised his mattock, smashed the jar, and discovered inside the thirteen papyrus books, bound in leather. Muhammad ‘Ali hesitated to break the jar, considering that a jinn, or spirit, might live inside. Digging around a huge boulder, they hit a red earthenware jar, almost a meter high. 1 He and his brothers had gone out to the Jabal to dig for sabakh, a soft soil they used to fertilize their crops. Thirty years later the discoverer himself, Muhammad ‘Ali al-Samman, told what happened. Originally natural, some of these caves were cut and painted, and used as grave sites as early as the sixth dynasty, some 4,300 years ago. According to one rumor, he had found the books near the town of Nag Hammadi at the Jabal al-Tarif, a mountain honeycombed with more than 150 caves. Even the identity of the discoverer remained unknown. The circumstances of this find were for years obscure, perhaps because the discovery was accidental, and its sale on the black market illegal. In December 1945, in the Upper Egyptian desert, an Arab peasant made an astonishing discovery of thirteen papyrus books-a discovery that is radically changing our understanding of the early Christians, their church, and their beliefs.

The Gospel of Philip by Unknown Nag Hammadi