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This manuscript is one of the few preserved purple codices from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The Vienna Genesis, the Codex Purpureus Rossanensis (Rossano Gospels) and the Codex Sinopensis (Sinope Gospels) constitute a related group of mid 6th-century manuscripts written on purple dyed parchment. They are dated on the basis of the style of the miniatures.
Although barely half of its sometime extent remains, even in its fragmentary state the manuscript constitutes one of the most absorbing achievements of western book illumination, with miniatures of outstanding artistic quality. The content of the codex, in word and image over 48 leaves that have been preserved, is biblical events from the fall to the death of Jacob at the end of Genesis, 49. Presumably the beginning of the manuscript, containing the creation must have been lost. The miniatures in the Vienna Genesis possess a unique significance for the history of painting as late antiquity moved into the early Middle Ages.
It is thought that a group of eight painters and two scribes produced the book, in a homogeneously organized artists' workshop and scriptorium in the Syria-Palestine region with Jerusalem at its centre, or alternatively the Syrian region centred upon the metropolis of Antioch.
On folio 47 recto Jacob's last prophecy and farewell are illustrated (Genesis 49). When his time had come, the Old Testament patriarch Jacob called unto his sons and prophesied their futures and the future of the tribes they would found. Then he gave them instructions regarding where he wished to be buried.
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