Judith. While the first scribe, known as Scribe A used a more traditional square insular minuscule script, Scribe B uses a newer, round minuscule script. This has made it quite difficult to date the codex, as both scripts originate from slightly different periods of Anglo-Saxon society. The date of this manuscript is usually believed to be “within a couple of decades of A.D. 1000,” argued to be no earlier than AD 997 and no later than AD 1016, although other scholars have dated it to be from as early as the 8th century. The earliest known owner of the codex was antiquarian Laurence Nowell, who left his signature in the top margin of several pages from the manuscript. The manuscript is heavily damaged from the fire of Cotton Library in 1731 and so some parts of accompanying texts are missing. The codex may have been intentionally put together because four of the manuscripts discuss monsters. Furthermore, it is a “liber monstrorum, or book of marvels, designed for entertainment along with usual edification. Andy Orchard argues the monsters witnessed in The Wonders of the East are identifiable in other texts of the manuscript. The "Donestre", cannibal creatures who lure "foreigners" in with "devious words" before eating all but their heads. These monsters sit and "weep over the head", which scholars such as Orchard have used to show how the creature resembles Grendel's Mother from Beowulf. Orchard further argues that these monsters reflect those who do not conform to Anglo-Saxon norms, and are a construction of the "other". Christopher Monk discusses theories focused on the sexuality and femininity of the monsters found in The Wonders of the East. He claims these monsters are depictions of human sexuality, aided by the illuminations which accompany the prose. The Wonders of the East is the only text from the Nowell Codex to be illustrated or "illuminated" which some highlight as central to the monster studies applied to the manuscript. Orchard argues that the text is a "liber monstorum" or "book of monsters" and illustrations aid the reader in studying the creatures described in the prose. Other creatures encountered include the snakes, which may stand for dragon. These creatures are said to have "horns as large as rams" and anyone who "strikes them or touches them" will die and the area around them "set ablaze". Another creature called a "conopenae", said to have the head of