ff.44; 250 x 125mm and smaller; text size approximately 210 x 85mm; from 33 to 37 lines of irregular length (11 to 25 letters in each line) in one column on papyrus.
Collation: originally as a single-quire codex of 50 leaves, ff.1-3 and the conjoined ff.48-50 are now missing. The papyrus leaves are arranged with the largest as the outer leaves and with a progressive graduation to the smallest in the centre, and now contains St. John’s Gospel 2(12)-20(20).
The Sahidic version of the text, although the dialect in which it is written differs somewhat from Sahidic. Chapter 9 verse 38 and the initial words of verse 39 are omitted as in Codex Sinaiticus and in the Washington Manuscript (W).
The MS is written in one hand throughout and bears a strong resemblance to that of the Codex Vaticanus. There are a considerable number of errors and omissions. Occasionally an error is cancelled with a diagonal line (e.g. in 5(45); 10(37); 11(27) and 14(6). Marks > have been inserted at the end of 18 lines, their purpose however is obscure since they do not merely fill lines. The only punctuation is a high point, but a colon appears on f.5, 1 - probably an error. The apostrophe is found above the letters κλΜξπρτΦ
Occasionally a circumflex is used over ει when it stands for ‘come’, and over the qualitative of ειρε, doubtless to mark them as such. The only contractions are IHC, XC and ΠΝσ.
The MS was found by a British School of Archaeology excavation at the cemetery of the village of Hamamieh, 27 miles south of Asyût, halfway between Cairo and Aswan. It was wrapped in a cloth bag and tied with a thread and contained in a broken crock buried 18 inches under the surface in the neighbourhood of the Roman or early Coptic graves.
See Sir Herbert Thompson, editor and translator of ‘The Gospel of St. John according to the earliest Coptic manuscript...’ London: 1924. See also R. Kilgour, ‘Four ancient manuscripts in the Bible House Library’. London: BFBS, 1928. pp. 15-38.