Copies representing the First translation of the Byzantine Physiologus are listed on this page. They are ordered alphabetically and referred to by a siglum and a brief name. They can be viewed by clicking on the + sign. In the section devoted to each copy there is a subsection headed About the copy with information about its location, contents and main features, about research pertaining to it and editions of its text. There are at least two tables in each section: the first lists the chapters in alphabetical order and the second indicates their order in the manuscript, most often in comparison with other copies within the same translation. When a copy has a more complex composition (in some cases copies contain two versions of the Physiologus belonging to different translations), tables relating to both translations are given in the interests of clarity.

The first translation of the Byzantine recension, which is probably also the earliest South Slavic translation, is currently known in three copies, two of them Bulgarian (М and К₁) and one Russian (Цар). In spite of some textological differences and dissimilarities as far as the completeness of their content goes, they obviously descend from a common protograph.

The Bulgarian copies are textologically closer to each other; furthermore, the manuscripts in which they have been included also contain the early translation of The Fragment from the Alexandrian recension of the Physiologus (Стойкова 1989), as well as other works with similar textological features. The copies of the First translation display a specific sequence of chapters, but it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions about the structure of the protograph since only eleven chapters are preserved in М, and nine in К₁, while there are twenty chapters in Цар. The chapters about the gorgon, the pelican, the phoenix and the viper occur only in the First translation. The text of the First translation is the only South Slavic text of the Physiologus which has a close equivalent among the Greek copies of the Byzantine recension. The closest text is present in the Codex Oxoniensis Baroccianus 95 from the 15th century, assigned by F. Sbordone (Sbordone 1936: xv, lxxxiv-lxxxv) to the third recension of the second text type of the Byzantine recension. The South Slavic (Bulgarian) translation was probably made no later than the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century (see Стойкова 1994: 64-68, 83). •