e the name
Alexandrine. Cyrillus himself, in a notice attached to it, says
that tradition represented a noble Egyptian woman of the fourth
century named Thecla as the writer of it (an Arabic subscription
makes her to have been Thecla the martyr). These external
notices are not so reliable as the internal marks, all of which
show it to be of a great age. Some assign it to the fourth
century, but it is more commonly assigned to the fifth, and
Egypt is generally regarded as the place where it was written.
It is on parchment in uncial letters, without divisions of
words, accents, or breathings, and with only occasional marks of
interpunction--a dot to indicate a division in the sense. The
lines are arranged in two columns, and the sections begin with
large letters, placed a little to the left of the
column--outside the measure of the column. The order of the
books is: (1) the gospels; (2) the Acts of the Apostles; (3) the
Catholic epistles; (4) the epistles of Paul, with that to the
Hebrews between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy; (5) the
Apocalypse. In the gospels, the Ammonian sections with the
Eusebian canons are indicated, and at the top of the pages the
larger sections or _titles_. In the Old Testament it is
defective in part of the Psalms. In the New it wants all of
Matthew as far as chap. 25:6; also from John 6:50 to 8:52; and
from 2 Cor. 4:13 to 12:6. It has appended at the end the genuine
letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, and a fragment of
a second spurious letter. To these apocryphal additions we owe
the preservation of the Apocalypse in an entire state. Until the
discovery of the Sinai codex, the Alexandrine exhibited the text
of the New Testament in far the most entire state of all the
uncial manuscripts. _See No. (2), PLATE I_.

(4) The fourth manuscript of this group is the celebrated
palimpsest called _Codex Ephraemi_, _Ephraem manuscript_,
preserved in the Imperial library of Paris, and marked in the
list of uncials with the letter C. Originally it contained the
whole of the New Testament, and apparently the Old also,
elegantly written on thin vellum, with a single column to a
page. The writing is continuous, without accents or breathings,
and the letters are rather larger than in the Alexandrian
manuscript, the first letter of each section being