About

The Early History of the Codex: A New Methodology and Ethics for Manuscript Studies (EthiCodex)  is a five-year project launched in August 2021. It is designed to place the study of the development and spread of the codex on more reliable foundations. To achieve this goal, the project has four secondary objectives.

1. Conduct provenance research into the ownership histories of early Greek and Latin codices.
2. Produce detailed physical and codicological descriptions of the make-up of the earliest Greek and Latin codices.
3. Design an open-access database making codicological data and provenance information for an estimated 2500 early Greek and Latin codices easily searchable and freely available online.
4. Make a systematic canvassing of museum and library collections containing ethically acquired early papyrus and parchment books to determine willingness to have AMS radiocarbon analysis carried out on their early codices and then fund this analysis.

The Early History of the Codex is funded by the Research Council of Norway (2021-2026) and managed by Brent Nongbri, Professor of History of Religions at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society.

Image credit: Bodleian Library MS. Gr. th. e. 7 (P)
© Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, CC-BY-NC 4.0