NAG HAMMADI CODICES

   Thirteen codices written in Copticduring the 4th century AD discovered by a peasant in 1945 near the modern city of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. After being sold separately, they have all been reunited in the Coptic Museum in Cairo and fully published. The texts are religious tractates pertaining to the dualistic gnostic sect that combined features of Christianity and paganism and was proscribed following the triumph of Christianity.

   See also Gnosticism; Manicheism.