In December 1945, two farmer boys, Muhammed and Khalifa'ali of the al-Samman clan, were digging for fertilizer in a valley at the base of the Jabal al-Ṭārif cliff. To carry the fertile soil back to their plot, they brought two camels with saddle-bags, which they tethered to a boulder. Working their way around, they were busy filling up the bags when they came upon an old, buried jar. Muhammad hesitated to open the jar, considering that a spirit might live inside. But realizing that it could contain gold, he pried open the lid, which was sealed shut with tar. From the jar emerged thirteen bound books of papyrus, covered in Coptic writing.

Out of a necessity for fuel and a fear of ancient curses, the mother of the two boys burned one of the manuscripts in the stove. Salvaged from the fire was a severely damaged text that, when reassembled, was found to be so different in subject matter and style that it was difficult to place it within the larger volume of the discovered library. The reconstruction was done by Dr. Veda Chiraksha Varad, professor at the Oxford faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern studies. It had reached her hands through a direct contact, who had discovered it on the black markets of Cairo, wrapped in the leaves of a date tree. Upon publication many questions were raised; it was thought that such an irregular text must have been the result of faulty labor. However, no researcher was able to come forward with an improved reconstruction. Over time the general consensus became that the fire had touched the text in such a way that it had become a different text altogether.

In the late ‘90s a renewed interest in ancient religious texts sparked up. The rapid technological advancement of the age left many seeking a foundation. The translation of the reconstructed manuscript had caught the attention of the Auto-ID Labs research group, a front-running collective on Networked Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) and emerging sensing technologies. Their work paved the way for the creation of autonomous operating devices which to an increasing degree mimic, replace living organisms. One of their founders, Daniel W. Engels, mentioned the manuscript in an interview with theCUBE. He said; “I felt recognised, like I could relate to that figure, branching off and constructing his own world, his own future. It inspired me to do the same. ” Shortly after the interview Daniel himself branched off, taking with him a substantial part of the Auto-ID Labs team. His new company would be named after that single loose word, all that was left of what was once a sentence, floating at the bottom of that enigmatic document.