The oldest surviving manuscripts
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The oldest surviving manuscripts have been preserved by the perfect dryness of their Middle Eastern resting places, whether placed within sarcophagi in Egyptian tombs, or reused as mummy-wrappings, discarded in the middens of Oxyrhynchus or secreted for safe-keeping in jars and buried (Nag Hammadi library) or stored in dry caves (Dead Sea scrolls). Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on palm leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash preserved some of the Greek library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum.
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See also
- Oldest surviving manuscripts of Ancient Greece and Rome
- Discovered text (archaeology)
- Manuscript
- Earliest known art
- Extant literature
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