After an attempt was made to sell the codex in both New York and Paris, it was acquired by the Carl Gustav Jung Institute in Zurich in 1951, through the mediation of Gilles Quispel. Meanwhile, a single codex had been sold in Cairo to a Belgian antique dealer. Dr Pahor Labib, the director of the Coptic Museum at that time, was keen to keep these manuscripts in their country of origin. After the revolution in 1956, these texts were handed to the Coptic Museum in Cairo, and declared national property. Over the years, most of the tracts were passed by the priest to a Cypriot antiques dealer in Cairo, thereafter being retained by the Department of Antiquities, for fear that they would be sold out of the country. The resident Coptologist and religious historian Jean Dorese, realizing the significance of the artifact, published the first reference to it in 1948. In 1946, the brothers became involved in a feud, and left the manuscripts with a Coptic priest, whose brother-in-law in October that year sold a codex to the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo (this tract is today numbered Codex III in the collection). As a result, what came to be known as the Nag Hammadi library (owing to the proximity of the find to Nag Hammadi, the nearest major settlement) appeared only gradually, and its significance went unacknowledged until some time after its initial uncovering. It is also reported that the brothers’ mother burned several of the manuscripts, worried, apparently, that the papers might have ‘dangerous effects’ (Markschies, Gnosis, 48). The find was not initially reported by either of the brothers, who sought to make money from the manuscripts by selling them individually at intervals. In December of that year, two Egyptian brothers found several papyri in a large earthenware vessel while digging for fertilizer around limestone caves near present-day Hamra Dom in Upper Egypt. The story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 has been described as ‘exciting as the contents of the find itself’ (Markschies, Gnosis: An Introduction, 48). 3 Complete list of codices found in Nag Hammadi.

Book of sophia nag hammidi library