This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Scrolls gathers four manuscripts in roll form rather than codex or screenfold, spanning a biblical text, an inventory, a printed sutra and a funerary compilation, united only by the physical form the writing takes.
The Great Isaiah Scroll is the oldest substantially complete manuscript of any biblical book, seventeen parchment sheets sewn into a roll some seven and a third metres long, found at Qumran in 1947 and dated palaeographically about a thousand years earlier than the oldest Hebrew Isaiah previously known; its consonantal text agrees closely with the medieval Masoretic Text while differing in numerous small readings.
The Copper Scroll, found at Qumran in 1952, is the strangest of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the only one not written on skin or papyrus: sheets of hammered copper listing some sixty four locations where treasure is said to be hidden, with no theology or prayer in it at all, only an inventory whose central question, real hoard or legend, has never been settled.
The Dunhuang Diamond Sutra is the earliest dated printed book known anywhere, a woodblock-printed Chinese scroll whose final line dates it to 11 May 868 and states it was made for free distribution on behalf of its patron's parents, since in Buddhist practice reproducing a sutra is itself an act of merit; it was sealed in a cave library around the year 1000 and not seen again until 1900.
The Papyrus of Ani, made around 1250 BCE, is the finest surviving copy of the Egyptian funerary compilation known as the Book of the Dead, distinguished not by its text but by its painted illustration, including the weighing of the heart scene that remains the most widely recognized single image of Egyptian religion.