Abstract

For the 2006 Easter (the date has a clear meaning) the National Geographic published an unknown manuscript, aimed to make the Christianity tremble from its foundations. The event benefited from the usual advertisement à l'américaine, in order to hit to the highest possible degree the Church and its believers. Nevertheless, the only crisis resulting from this initiative is probably a financial one, for those who bought and restored the manuscript. Discovered in the early 80's, the document remained for long time the property of a obscure dealer of antiquities from Cairo, who never cared about the content of the manuscript and interested exclusively by the amount of money he could get by selling it. Stolen and then returned to its owner, brought in Switzerland and then in USA, protected only by a page of an old newspaper, the Codex was seriously damaged during the 20 years before its official publication. When eventually in the hands of the scientist, the manuscript was a muddle of small fragments that took four years to be put together and reconstituted. An incredible adventure, a huge and delicate work for restoration, all that for an outcome with modest scientific interest and without any effect on Christians.