Manichaean
The most important and largest collection of non-Christian texts on papyrus acquired by Chester Beatty is the remarkable Manichaean codices, written in Coptic and dated to around AD 400.
The now separated folios are housed in over 1,000 frames and include many unique sacred texts of a lost religion which once rivalled Christianity and Islam and spread from North Africa to the Near East.
The Iranian prophet Mani (put to death in AD 276) believed that he was the successor of Jesus. He absorbed the teachings of Christianity, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism and preached a new religion based on the dual forces of light and dark.
CBL Pma 1 (Kephalaia)
CBL Pma 2 (Homilies and Varia)
CBL Pma 3 (Psalmbook, Part I)
CBL Pma 4 (Psalmbook, Part II)
CBL Pma 5 (Synaxeis)
Links
International Association of Manichaean Studies
http://www.manichaeism.de/index.html
International Association for Coptic Studies
(http://rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it/~iacs)
University of Münster
(http://www.uni-muenster.de/Philologie/Iaek/mani.html)