The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu is the primary Christian source for the conquest of Egypt by the Muslims between 639 and 642. The full chronicle begins with Creation and the Garden of Eden and ends with the Muslim conquest of Egypt. It was probably originally written in Coptic Egyptian and perhaps also partly in Greek (scholars differ), but the original has not survived. It was translated into Arabic during the High Middle Ages and then apparently from Arabic to Geʿez (classical and liturgical Ethiopian) in perhaps the sixteenth or seventeenth century, though again scholars differ. It is from the Ethiopian translation that the current English translation was made. The Ethiopian version suffers from inaccuracies and— most unfortunately for our purposes here— has a significant missing portion dealing with the beginning of the conquest.