<P> It suffered damage in the Cotton Library fire at Ashburnham House in 1731 . Since then, parts of the manuscript have crumbled along with many of the letters . Rebinding efforts, though saving the manuscript from much degeneration, have nonetheless covered up other letters of the poem, causing further loss . Kevin Kiernan, in preparing his electronic edition of the manuscript, used fibre - optic backlighting and ultraviolet lighting to reveal letters in the manuscript lost from binding, erasure, or ink blotting . </P> <P> The Beowulf manuscript was transcribed from an original by two scribes, one of whom wrote the prose at the beginning of the manuscript and the first 1939 lines before breaking off in mid sentence . The first scribe made a point of carefully regularizing the spelling of the original document by using the common West Saxon language and by avoiding any archaic or dialectical features . The second scribe, who wrote the remainder, with a difference in handwriting noticeable after line 1939, seems to have written more vigorously and with less interest . As a result, the second scribe's script retains more archaic dialectic features which allow modern scholars to ascribe the poem a cultural context . While both scribes appear to proofread their work, there are nevertheless many errors . The second scribe was ultimately the more conservative copyist of the two as he did not modify the spelling of the text as he wrote but rather copied what he saw in front of him . In the way that it is currently bound, the Beowulf manuscript is followed by the Old English poem Judith . Judith was written by the same scribe that completed Beowulf as evidenced through similar writing style . Worm - holes found in the last leaves of the Beowulf manuscript that aren't present in the Judith manuscript suggest that at one point Beowulf ended the volume . The rubbed appearance of some leaves also suggest that the manuscript stood on a shelf unbound, as is known to have been the case with other Old English manuscripts . From knowledge of books held in the library at Malmesbury Abbey and available as source works, and from the identification of certain words particular to the local dialect found in the text, the transcription may have taken place there . </P> <P> Icelandic scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin made the first transcriptions of the manuscript in 1786 and published the results in 1815, working as part of a Danish government historical research commission . He made one himself, and had another done by a professional copyist who knew no Anglo - Saxon . Since that time, however, the manuscript has crumbled further, making these transcripts a prized witness to the text . While the recovery of at least 2000 letters can be attributed to them, their accuracy has been called into question, and the extent to which the manuscript was actually more readable in Thorkelin's time is uncertain . </P> <P> Main article: List of translations and artistic depictions of Beowulf </P>

Who transcribed the earliest known manuscript of beowulf