1500 years old
Sotheby’s auctions ten bids on marble
The stone weighs 52 kilograms, is 60 centimetres high and is said to be worth up to two million dollars (1.91 million euros): On Wednesday, auction house Sotheby's will be auctioning off the white marble slab on which the oldest known inscription of the Ten Commandments carved in stone can be read. Around 1500 years ago, someone carved the commandments of God, which are fundamental to Judaism and Christianity, there in ancient Hebrew.
The stone was discovered in 1913 during construction work for a train line on the southern coast of what is now Israel, in an area where early churches and synagogues were built. However, the finders were not aware of the stone's preciousness. The marble slab was used as a paving stone and ended up at the entrance to a house - with the inscribed side facing upwards.
Scientist recognized the value of the stone
For three decades, passers-by were able to walk over the Ten Commandments until the stone was sold to a scientist in 1943. The man had recognized that the inscription on the paving stone was the Decalogue, which could have once been placed in a synagogue or even a private house. These buildings were either destroyed by the Romans between 400 and 600 AD or by the Crusaders in the 11th century.
Biblical verses in the second book of Moses
The 20 lines engraved in the stone correspond to the biblical verses in the second book of Moses, however the tablet only contains nine of the commandments listed in the Bible, the third, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain", has been omitted. Instead, the stone contains the commandment to pray on Mount Garizim in what is now the West Bank, which was sacred to the Samaritans.
For people today, the stone provides a link to the beliefs "that have shaped Western civilization," explained Richard Austin of Sotheby's. "The encounter with this shared cultural asset is like a journey through the millennia."
Bible auctioned for 35 million euros
Last year, the auction house auctioned off a Hebrew Bible more than a thousand years old for a record price of the equivalent of 35 million euros. The so-called Codex Sassoon from the late ninth or early tenth century was the most expensive handwritten work ever sold at auction.
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