The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town (on the Nile closer to Aswan than Cairo) of Nag Hammadi in 1945.

Thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer. The writings in these codices comprise 52 mostly Gnostic treatises, but they also include three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum and a partial translation/alteration of Plato's Republic.

They were probably buried to hide them from the imperial church in the 300's AD. But some they were probably pre-Christian, showing Jewish reinterpretations of such OT personalities as Seth and Melchizedek.