THE COPTIC PAPYRI found recently at Al-Gurna near Luxor have been identified:

The Book of Isaiah under the sands of Egypt

(Science and Scholarship in Poland)

The archaeological mystery has been solved! The latest research shows that the manuscript found by Polish archaeologists in the village of Gourna (Sheikh abd el-Gourna) near Luxor in Upper Egypt contains the entire biblical book of Isaiah in the Coptic translation. “This is the first complete translation of this book in Coptic” – says Prof. Ewa Wipszycka-Bravo of the Institute of Archaeology at Warsaw University.

In February last year, Tomasz Górecki heading the Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the Warsaw University mission in Gourna, made a unique find in the rubbish heap of a monastery. It consisted of two papyrus books in leather covers and a collection of parchment sheets bound by two bits of wood. This was the first discovery of Coptic manuscripts in Egypt since 1952, which are well preserved and supported by a well-researched archaeological context.


One of the books is the “Code of Pseudo-Basili” – the only preserved full text in Coptic, which is a collection of rules regulating Church life. The other contains the life of St. Pistentios, one of the Coptic bishops. Both texts date back to the 7th/8th centuries.

[...]

The Isaiah manuscript is dated to the ninth or tenth century and its binding includes fragments of a text called “The suffering of St. Peter.” This is reported to be the first complete Coptic manuscript of Isaiah to be recovered, although I wonder if that is correct. Maybe the first to be excavated? There is a complete Coptic Old Testament, isn't there?

(Via the Agade list.)