Highlights from the Collection:
Coptic medical codex in pocket size format

P. Carlsberg 500 is a pocket sized medical codex written in Sahidic Coptic. The manuscript is dated to the early 6th cent. AD on palaeographical grounds and seems to been written somewhere in Middle Egypt, perhaps specifically in the Apa Jeremias monastery. It was purchased in the early 1930's in Cairo by the coptologist Carl Schmidt.
The format of the parchment codex is exceptionally small, each page measuring only about 9-9½ by 8-8½ cm. This may be taken as an indication that it was produced for a private individual rather than a monastic library, presumably so that it could easily be brought along when visiting patients.

The fine pagination in the upper margin shows that the twenty pages preserved in the collection includes pages 103-106, 111-114, and 135-136.

From page 112: 'For those people who throw up their food. (Mix) seeds of this plant and water and wine and honey. Let him drink and he will be healed.'

P. Carlsberg 500, fragment C vo ( page 112)

P. Carlsberg 500, fragment F vo 

Example of pagination, P. Carlsberg 500, fragment B ro (page 105)