More re earliest page found at Deir al-Surian

Fragments of the earliest dated Christian literary manuscript have been found at Deir al-Surian, an ancient monastery in the Egyptian desert. Dating from 411 AD, these were discovered under a collapsed floor of a ninth-century tower. The fragments are from the final page of a codex written in Syriac (an Eastern Aramaic language) which was acquired by the British Museum library in the 19th century.

Few manuscripts have had such an astonishing history. In 1847, British Museum librarian William Cureton said that “among all the curiosities of literature, I know of none more remarkable than the fate of this matchless volume”. We can now add a final chapter to the story.

The manuscript on Christian martyrs was written in Edessa (now Sanliurfa, Turkey), and at some point in the next five centuries it was taken eastwards. In 931, the abbot of Deir al-Surian travelled to Baghdad and brought it back to Egypt.

In 1086, a monk added a marginal note in the middle of the manuscript, expressing concern that the last page with its colophon (the scribe’s ending notes) might be lost. Since the book was by then already “ancient”, he wanted to record that it had been written in 411. The monk’s precaution was wise, since centuries later the last page did indeed become detached.

The European who found the main manuscript was Lord Curzon, who visited Deir al-Surian in 1837 in search of ancient texts for the British Museum. There were then only a dozen monks, led by a blind and elderly abbot. Lord Curzon bought three Coptic manuscripts, but he had heard rumours that earlier texts in Syriac were hidden in the cellar of the ancient tower, in a vault used to store olive oil.