Nag Hammâdi

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Nag Hammâdi (Arabic نجع حمادي; transliterated: Naj' Hammādi) (26°03′N 32°15′E), is a town in central Egypt, called Chenoboskion (Greek Χηνοβόσκιον) in classical antiquity, about 80 kilometres north-west of Luxor with some 30,000 citizens. It is mostly a peasant area where goods such as sugar and aluminium are produced.

The town of Nag Hammadi was established by Mahmoud Basha Hammadi, who was a member of a large Egyptian family Hammadi in Sohag. He created this town for the indigenous people who were forced to leave their homeland by the British occupation in Sohag. In return those people gave their new town the name of Hammadi. Mahmoud Basha Hammadi was known for his strong positions against the British occupation. He owned most of the agricultural land in Sohag.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] The Nag Hammadi Library

Main article: Nag Hammadi library

Nag Hammadi is best known for being the site where, in December 1945 twelve leather-bound papyrus codices, along with pages torn from a thirteenth book,^[1] buried in a sealed jar were found by local peasants. The writings in these codices, dating back to the 2nd century AD,^[2] comprised 52 mostly Gnostic tractates (treatises), believed to be a library hidden by monks from the nearby monastery of St Pachomius when the possession of such banned writings, denounced as heresy, was made an offence.

The contents of the Coptic-bound codices were written in Coptic, though the works were probably all translations from Greek. Most famous of these works must be the Gospel of Thomas, of which the Nag Hammadi codices contain the only complete copy.

All the texts have been public since 1975, and are available online (in English, for example, at gnosis.org^[3]).

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• The Nag Hammadi THE GNOSTIC SOCIETY LIBRARY
• The Nag Hammadi Library
• How the manuscripts were found
• Nag Hammadi - an Evangelical Christian viewpoint of the Nag Hammadi Library