Two years before a Bedouin shepherd discovered the Dead Sea scrolls hidden in a cave not far Jerusalem, a farmer in Southern Egypt made a similar discovery when he turned up some old sealed jars in his field containing some leather-bound papyrus manuscripts, one of which ended up being used by his mother as fire-starter before they realized how ancient and valuable they were. Unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written in Aramaic and Hebrew, these were written in Coptic.
The documents date from the 2rd to the 4th centuries and are assumed to have been copied from Greek originals. Over the years many more Gnostic texts written in Coptic have been uncovered in Egypt. These texts are available free online and tell a different story from the one told by the New Testament.