It all seems to start in 1859, with Tischendorf and Sinaiticus, and then basically never ends. Why? Well, the land of Egypt did not suddenly decide to grow some new antiquities. Nor did Western European Christians suddenly snap their fingers and say, “Of course! Egypt! That’s where we will find all the manuscripts we ever dreamed of. I bet they even have papyri.” True, there had been a couple of intrepid predecessors, above all the incredible James Bruce in the 1770s, but the sheer scale of new exploration and research from the 1860s onward is several orders of magnitude greater. Again, why?For earlier posts in this series, see here and links. Cross-file under Lost Books.
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