Nash Papyrus (MS Or.233) The Nash Papyrus is a second-century BCE fragment containing the text of the Ten Commandments followed by the Šemaʿ. Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls it was the oldest known manuscript containing a text from the Hebrew Bible. The manuscript was originally identified as a lectionary used in liturgical contexts, due to the juxtaposition of the Decalogue (probably reflecting a mixed tradition, a composite of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5) with the Šemaʿ prayer (Deuteronomy 6:4-5), and it has been suggested that it is, in fact, from a phylactery (tefillin, used in daily prayer). Purchased from an Egyptian dealer in antiquities in 1902 by Dr Walter Llewellyn Nash and presented to the Library in 1903, the fragment was said to have come from the Fayyum.

If we narrow the process oftransmission down to a single, hypothetical strand, it is feasible thatPtolemy originally wrote The Almagest on a papyrus scroll insecond-century Alexandria. That scroll would have had to berecopied at least twice for it to survive until the sixth century, at whichpoint it might well have been copied onto parchment and bound intoa book. This, too, would need to be recopied every few hundredyears to ensure that it survived (again assuming that it escaped theusual pests, damage and disasters) and was available to scholars in1500. It is therefore likely that The Almagest had to be recopied atthe very least five times during the period 150–1500.

Atbest, papyrus only lasts for a couple of hundred years before the textneeds to be recopied onto a new scroll.

we have evidencetoo that some users of papyrus rolls made marginal notes, notably introducingsymbols to mark a passage for its content or for future editing.41

Another papyrus, recovered in Toura, Egypt, contains notes taken on apolemical work by the church father Origen (185–254), including both faithfulexcerpts of varying lengths and notes made by abridgment from his AgainstCelsus.1

adoption progressive du codex, l