Manichaeism

=== Central Asian and Iranian primary sources ===
In the early 1900s, original Manichaean writings started to come to light when German scholars led by [[Albert Grünwedel]], and then by [[Albert von Le Coq]], began excavating at [[Gaochang]], the ancient site of the Manichaean Uyghur Kingdom near Turpan, in Chinese Turkestan (destroyed around AD 1300). While most of the writings they uncovered were in very poor condition, there were still hundreds of pages of Manichaean scriptures, written in three Iranian languages (Middle Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian) and old Uyghur. These writings were taken back to Germany and were analyzed and published at the [[Prussian Academy of Sciences]] in Berlin, by Le Coq and others, such as [[Friedrich W. K. Müller]] and [[Walter Bruno Henning]]. While the vast majority of these writings were written in a version of the Syriac script known as [[Manichaean script]], the German researchers, perhaps for lack of suitable fonts, published most of them using the [[Hebrew alphabet]] (which could easily be substituted for the 22 Syriac letters).{{citation needed|date=September 2017}}

Perhaps the most comprehensive of these publications was {{lang|de|Manichaeische Dogmatik aus chinesischen und iranischen Texten}} (''Manichaean Dogma from Chinese and Iranian texts''), by [[Ernst Waldschmidt]] and Wolfgang Lentz, published in Berlin in 1933.<ref>[[Ernst Waldschmidt|Waldschmidt, E.]], and Lentz, W., ''Manichäische Dogmatik aus chinesischen und iranischen Texten'' (SPAW 1933, No. 13)</ref> More than any other research work published before or since, this work printed, and then discussed, the original key Manichaean texts in the original scripts, and consists chiefly of sections from Chinese texts, and Middle Persian and Parthian texts transcribed with the Hebrew alphabet. After the [[Nazi Party]] gained power in Germany, the Manichaean writings continued to be published during the 1930s, but the publishers no longer used Hebrew letters, instead transliterating the texts into Latin letters.{{citation needed|date=September 2017}}