Hello Again!
Well, another week has passed and I am still in disbelief of
how quickly the days go by. This week is starting off with rain trickling down
the windows of the library but I am looking through the window of history today!
(Please excuse the cheesy cliché) As promised, I have a couple of interesting
snapshots of the hundreds of pictures I have been combing through. Most
recently I have been reorganizing the series on the Nag Hammadi dig and the
surrounding work involved in such a monumentally historic project. This had
included everything from field logs of the dig sites, pictures of the
surrounding towns and landscape, and a plethora of amazing records documenting
the whole process.
Going through this series in the IAC Nag Hammadi Collection
has afforded me the opportunity to see a different time and place through the
eyes of both the locals and scholars involved with the excavation and scholarly
analysis.
One of the amazing photos included in the series are of the
discoverer of the codices, Muhammad Ali and his mother.
Ali standing next to his mother (dressed in black).
The mother of Ali had actually burned one of the codex books upon their initial discovery. Unfortunately, there was no other information on
the reasons for his mother burning one of the books but one can just imagine
what was going through the minds of the IAC scholars upon hearing this story!
And as I mentioned in one of my previous posts I am
including just one picture of Henry Kissinger from his tour of the Nag Hammadi
Codices. He is intently studying pages of ancient texts while members of the
project explain what is written and the significance to ancient Christianity.
There are pieces of history hidden all around us and it is
up to us, historians and others alike, to document that history so others have
the opportunity to look through the window of the past.