Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE The Jar in the Desert IN 1945, NEAR the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, a farmer named Muhammad al-Samman went digging for fertilizer. What he found instead was a jar. It was about a meter tall, sealed tight, and buried in the dry earth of a desert cave. At first, he hesitated to open it — not because of curiosity, but because of superstition. Some locals believed that ancient jars might contain jinn — spirits, curses, or worse. But curiosity won. Inside the jar were thirteen leather-bound books, written in Coptic — an ancient Egyptian language with Greek influence. They were brittle, flaking, and packed with secrets no one had read in over 1,500 years. The texts were taken,...