An Unknown Fragment of the Acts of Andrew

Abstract

On January 7th, 1956 in Berlin I purchased a large collection of Coptic and other papyri on behalf of Utrecht University library. These documents had formerly belonged to the late Prof. Carl Schmidt, whose family had kept them in a safe during the troubled years of war. Among these papyri were some pages of an apocryphal writing called: Act of Andrew. According to Dr. G. KuntaSchmidt, a niece of the above mentioned scholar, there is some reason for supposing that her uncle had acquired these leaves shortly before his death in Cairo on April 17th, 1938. I must confess however that I have never read any announcement of the existence of, or publication concerning these documents; nor have I so much as heard tell of them among the Cairo antique dealers who greatly loved and esteemed the famous Berlin professor. I would therefore be most grateful for any information as to the time when and the place where they were found and purchased. The pages of this apocryphal writing are numbered and in their present state are of the following sizes: