Berlin Codex

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In 1896, the Coptic Berlin Codex (aka. the Akhmim Codex), given the accession number 8502, (Berolinensis Gnosticus 8502) was unearthed in Akhmim, Egypt. In January 1896, Carl Reinhardt bought the codex which had been discovered, wrapped in feathers, in a niche in a wall at a Christian burial site. It was written in Sahidic dialect of Coptic, which was in common use in Egypt during that time.

It was a papyrus bound book (a codex), dating to early 5th century (or possibly late 4th century). It was taken to Berlin, where it was brought to the notice of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences by C. Schmidt, July 16, 1896, and Schmidt edited the Pistis Sophia in 1907, but the contents of the Berlin Codex were not finally completely translated until the 1950s. Few people paid attention to it until the 1970s, when it suddenly became very interesting to a new generation of scholars of early Christianity in the wake of the more famous group of early Gnostic Christian documents that was found at Nag Hammadi in 1945.

The "Berlin Codex" is a single-quire (a quire is a set of leaves which are stitched together - for more information see bookbinding) Coptic codex bound with wooden boards covered with a leather that neither resembles tanned leather, nor does it resemble parchment or alum-tawed skin (i.e. skin that has been dressed with alum to soften and bleach it) .

Four texts are bound together in the Berlin Codex. All are Greek works in Coptic translations. The first, in two sections, is a fragmentary Gospel of Mary, for which this is the primary source manuscript. The manuscript is a Coptic translation of an earlier Greek original. Though the surviving pages are well-preserved, the text is not complete and it is clear from what was found that the Gospel of Mary contained nineteen pages; pages 1-6 and 11-14 are missing entirely.

The Codex also contained the Apocryphon of John, The Sophia of Jesus Christ, and an epitome of the Act of Peter. These texts are often discussed together with the earlier Nag Hammadi texts.