A leather manuscript more than 4,000 years old has been painstakingly reconstructed by a scholar after it was rediscovered in the Egyptian museum in Cairo.

Containing religious spells as well as colourful depictions of divine and supernatural beings, predating those found in the Book of the Dead manuscripts, the leather roll is around 2.5 metres long, with text and drawings on both sides. It is both the longest surviving leather ancient Egyptian manuscript and the oldest, according to Egyptologist Dr Wael Sherbiny, who found the roll in a mix of small and large fragments on the Cairo Museum’s shelves and announced his discovery at the International Congress of Egyptologists in Florence in August.

“The document was completely forgotten, probably because those who had direct contact with it died during or right after the second world war. Since then, it was stored among hundreds of other manuscripts and ancient papyri in the Cairo Museum,” Sherbiny said. “The moment I laid my eyes on the manuscript, I was thrilled.”

A fragment of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which the rediscovered manuscript predates. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

The artefact’s provenance is not known, but according to Sherbiny it was bought by the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology from an antiquities dealer after the first world war, and then donated to the Cairo Museum two years before the outbreak of the second world war, where it subsequently “fell completely into oblivion”.

“After a long and difficult study of the details of each of these fragments, I managed to reconstruct them and discover the original layout of these segments,” he said, comparing the process to that of completing a jigsaw puzzle. “I did not make any restoration work on the document, but managed to reconstruct the entire segments based on my familiarity with the similar texts and drawings attested on the insides of some coffins.”

He dates the roll to between 2,300 BC and 2,000 BC, from the late Old Kingdom up to the early Middle Kingdom, and says it contains many new religious texts, including a large pictorial-textual segment from the so-called Book of Two Ways, known from the floorboard decorations of Middle Kingdom coffins, as well as religious spells formulated in the first-person singular, probably intended for recitation by a priest.

“In the segment that was used in the so-called Book of Two Ways, the speaker is approaching an elaborate architectonic structure with a highly restricted access,” said Sherbiny. “A certain holy place that is protected by multiple gates and their powerful guardians. These latter are characterised as supernatural beings with immense magical powers. The texts in the scroll contain this specific and magical knowledge that is required to pass safely by these dangerous beings and get access to the divine restricted area behind the gates.”

Wael Sherbiny working on a portion of the manuscript at the Cairo Museum

Sherbiny says that only six other portable manuscripts have survived from ancient Egypt, which could have been created around the same time as the leather scroll; all are papyri. According to the scholar, although leather was a precious writing material in ancient Egypt, the country’s dry climate has preserved papyrus over the millennia, while leather has not survived.

Sherbiny, who has a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Leuven in Belgium, is now preparing the manuscript for publication.