In the eighth century CE, the Christian theologian John of Damascus referred to a Book of the Cow among the sacred texts of the Muslims. P. Hamb. Arab. 68, which was probably found in the southern Egyptian city of Edfu and is now kept in the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek of Hamburg, not only represents so far the earliest preserved Qurʾānic manuscript on papyrus, but also bears witness to an independent circulation of the Sūra of The Cow in late seventh- or early eighth-century Egypt. Several discrepancies with what became the commonly accepted text of the Qurʾān suggest that this copy was rapidly discarded. The present volume offers a complete edition as well as a thorough philological and historical study of the manuscript.