The Newberry Library in Chicago contains the single most important piece of Mesoamerican literature called Popol Vuh. The significance of the Popol Vuh is immense since it is one of a small number of early Mesoamerican mythological texts. It is a book created in the Classical Quiché language containing mythological narratives and a genealogy of the rulers of the old the Quiché kingdom of highland Guatemala. The original manuscript of the Popol Vuh written about 1550 has been lost to us. Luckily, a Spanish monk kept a handwritten copy in the early 18th century which survived and reached us.
The Popol Vuh is based on an original Maya codex written in the Mayan hieroglyphic script. It contains a creation myth followed by mythological stories of two Hero Twins: Hunahpu and Xbalanque. The second part of the book deals with details of the foundation and history of the Quiché kingdom, tying in the royal family with the legendary gods in order to assert rule by divine right.
Lindisfarne Gospels is a priceless illuminated manuscript that was created in the early 700s. It is an illustrated Latin copy of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We know the name of the manuscript creator. His name was Eardfrith, he was a monk whobecame Bishop of Lindisfarne in 698 and died in 721.
Between 1947 and 1956 almost 900 ancient documents were discovered in the eleven caves new the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. With a small exception of some papyrus documents, most of the manuscripts were written on parchment in three languages: Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. The manuscripts named by scientists the Dead Sea Scrolls, became the greatest manuscript discovery of all modern times.
One of the sacred funerary texts found in the tombs and pyramids along with the Book of the Dead is the famous Book of Gates. Overall, this secret and mysterious manuscipt appears in the times of the New Kingdom, somewhere between 16th and 11th centuries B.C. Book of Gates is accompanying the Book of the Dead which facilitates the passage of a newly deceased into the next world. It is also most famous for depiction of the human races. In fact, Book of Gates tells us what races are known to ancient Egyptians. They are presented as four men entering the next world and names them as Syrians, Nubians, Lybians and Egyptians races.
There are some mysterious texts in Book of Gates that we still don’t fully understand. In the Book of Gates a deceased soul is guided to follow the journey of the sun through the underworld during the night. The text explains that at different stages of the journey the soul must pass through a series of gates. Book of Gates tells us that each gate is guarded by a different goddess and that a soul has to recognize her and act according to the character of that goddess. If the soul does what it is supposed to do then it will pass unharmed. It it makes mistakes then it will wind up in a lake of fire and face eternal torment.
All goddesses have different titles and clothes but they all wear a five pointed star above their heads. The appearance of these goddesses is astounding and up to this day remains a mystery. They are not mentioned in any other texts of Egyptian mythology. They are completely unique as they are not depicted anywhere else in Egypt, except in the Book of Gates.
Another mystery that still bothers scientists is of another origin. Although Book of Gates was reserved only for pharaohs and aristocrats, archeologists found it in the tomb of a common man named Sennedjem. He was an ordinary worker in the ancient village of artists and craftsmen who built pharonic tombs in the New Kingdom.
Originally, all documents and books were written by hand. This type of manuscripts lasted until the invention of printing in China in the 7th century and later in Europe in about 1450. The material used for hand-written ancient manuscripts differed depending on the geographical location. The ones that were preserved till our days included papyrus, various parchments, and even palm leaves and birch bark documents.
First ancient manuscripts were discovered in Egyptian tombs and mausoleums. They were either located inside the sarcophagi or even reused as mummy wrappings. Archeologists and adventurers were discovering scrolls of manuscripts in bizarre places like dry caves, desert burials, or within the secretly buried jars.
The world of antiquity was famous for its large libraries, the most famous and largest of which was the Library of Alexandria. There is a certain irony that most of the scrolls that were kept in these huge storage all over the ancient world were lost forever. They were either burnt in fire or destroyed during wars and turmoil.
Yet, there was another reason for the loss of all those invaluable scrolls. Generally, papyrus scrolls don’t last more than a couple of centuries. Those scrolls that were chosen not to be copied on parchment during the times of Christianity did not survive.
Even with the invention of printing European hand-written manuscript writing kept on going for another century. Printing was expensive and not accessible for everybody at those times. Each time when a copy of a document was created more and more errors were introduced with each copy. That is why, specialists have to compare different versions of the same document to figure out the most authentic parts of a document. As for private and governmental documents, they remained handwritten until the invention of the typewriter in the 19th century.
One of the most famous forgeries of the Dark Ages was the manuscript called the Donation of Constantine. I found this story while going through some internet research for my local web analytics company. This fake Roman imperial edict was evidently devised in the second part of the 8th century for the Pope of Rome Stephen II.
The Donation of Constantine t was used by Catholic church for centuries as the support for its territorial claims. It believed blindly in the authenticity of the famous manuscript. Only in the second part of the fifteenth century, with the revival of Classical scholarship and textual critique, the Church had begun to realize that the document could not possibly be genuine.
In the forgery Roman emperor Constantine allegedly grants to the Popes of Rome dominion over lands in Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace, Africa, the city of Rome and the entire Western Roman Empire. The manuscript tells that all these territories are presented a gift of the first Christian emperor to the pope Sylvester. All these named lands were a one gigantic “present” from the grateful emperor to the pope for instructing him in the Christian faith, baptizing him, and even miraculously curing Constantine of leprosy.
Pope Stephen II was a shrewd diplomat. He successfully used the forgery to create the foundation of the Papal States. He crossed into Gaul with this manuscript and presented a copy to the new king of Franks Pepin the Short. Pope managed to gain king’s support against Lombards who occupied former Byzantine territories in Italy and threatened to push the Pope out of Rome. In 756 Pepin and his Frankish army forced the Lombards to surrender their conquests to the pope of Rome. These lands would become the Papal States and would be the basis of the Papacy’s secular power for the next eleven centuries.
