A Survey of the Manuscripts
of some Ancient Authors

This page makes no pretence at being comprehensive.  For some time now when I have looked at the works of some author of antiquity, I have been interested in how we got this text - how did it reach us, in what manuscripts does it exist, etc.  This page holds some notes on this.  It's really just a scrapbook.  Let's hope someone does a real version soon.  

GENERAL NOTES ON ANCIENT BOOKS

• Capituli: Notes on chapter divisions and chapter titles

• Recent discoveries of Latin texts

• 6 new sermons of Augustine found at Erfurt - 2008

• The Medinet Madi discover of 1929 -- 7 codices containing Manichean texts

• The Tura/Toura discovery of 1941 -- 8 codices containing works by Origen and Didymus the Blind

• The Nag Hammadi discovery of 1945 -- 13 gnostic codices

• The Dakhleh Oasis finds at Kellis in the 1990's.

• The Gospel of Judas find: the story so far.

• The discovery of the lost portion of Chrysostom's 2nd sermon against the Jews.

• A 2005 find of two coptic codices and some papyri at Qurna.

• A 2005 find of a new poem by Sappho

• The 1962 Deveni scroll

• The CEDOPAL list of literary papyri found, by author

• The Codex Brucianus

• The Tebessa Manichaean codex

• Manuscripts in the library of Notre Dame des Semences in Iraq. (To be completed)

Articles

• J.B. Chabot, Review: Catalogue of the Syriac and Arabic manuscripts preserved in the episcopal library of Séert, by Addai Scher, Chaldean Archbishop of Séert. Journal Asiatique, 10:6 (1905) pp. 558-560.  French with English translation.

Bibliography

Those wanting details of Latin classics should consult L.D. Reynolds, "Texts & Transmissions: A survey of the Latin Classics", Oxford: Clarendon Press. There are also usually notes on the manuscripts of a writer in a text in the original language - Greek or Latin - such as the Loeb series.

N. G. WILSON, Scholars of Byzantium, London: Duckworth (1983).  Checked. Excellent on the transmission of texts in the Greek empire.

Constructive feedback is welcomed to Roger Pearse.

Written 24th May 2002.