Albane

COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE NAG HAMMADI DISCOVERY

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Visiting the location in 2001, I met specialists in Nag Hammadi manuscripts. By cross-referencing the tales with collected testimonials, I was able to draw up the table below. Many thanks to the webmaster of the http://www.nag-hammadi.com site for his precious insights and link to my own site.

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In 1945, peasant Mohammed Ali Samman discovered a group of manuscripts.
Scattered, sold and repurchased, experts have followed three leads.

The 1^st section is entrusted to cleric Al-Qummus Basiliyus Abd el Masih

It is sent to Egyptian historian Raghib, who stores it in the Coptic Museum in Cairo. It is studied by Jean Doresse, French Egyptologist and Toga Mina, Director of the Coptic Museum of Cairo

The 2^nd section falls into the hands of an outlaw from the village of Samman, Bahij Ali, who sells it to Phocion Tano, another Cairo antique dealer.
The government tries to repurchase it from Phocion Tano.

In the meantime, the latter has sold:

one of the codices
(#14) to Alfredo Malardi. A short time later, the police conclude he’s committed suicide after finding his body in a transalpine lake.

Thomas A. Malko has the time to buy it back before himself disappearing for unknown reasons.

It was quite by chance that Peter Volker picks up the trail of the orphan codex, which ultimately costs him his life.

the other codices to Miss Dattari, an Italian collector residing in the Egyptian capital.

The Dattari collection becomes the property of the Coptic Museum of Cairo in 1952.

The 3^rd section is sold on the black market and repurchased in Cairo by antique dealer Albert Eid. He smuggles it illegally out of Egypt. Failing to sell it in the United States, he keeps it in a safe-deposit box in Belgium. Upon his death, his wife tries to sell it.

Professor Gilles Quispel acquires it through an intermediary from the Jung Foundation in Zurich.

Thomas A. Malko and Alfredo Malardi died tragically.
Peter Volker disappeared in 1975.
No one knows what became of codex 14...