Cotton Genesis

The Cotton Genesis (London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho B VI) is a 4th- or 5th-century Greek Illuminated manuscript copy of the Book of Genesis.^[1] It was a luxury manuscript with many miniatures. It is one of the oldest illustrated biblical codices to survive to the modern period. Most of the manuscript was destroyed in the Cotton library fire in 1731, leaving only eighteen charred, shrunken scraps of vellum. From the remnants, the manuscript appears to have been more than 440 pages with approximately 340–360 illustrations that were framed and inserted into the text column. Many miniatures were also copied in the 17th century and are now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (Ms. fr. 9530).