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Sotheby’s is auctioning off a “vastly important historic artifact,” the oldest-known carving of the Ten Commandments dating back approximately 1,500 years.
The two-foot high marble tablet weighs 115 pounds and was unearthed in 1913 during railway excavations along the southern coast in Israel near the sites of early synagogues, mosques and churches, according to Sotheby’s. It is the only complete tablet of the Ten Commandments to survive from the late Roman-Byzantine era.
“This remarkable tablet is not only a vastly important historic artifact, but a tangible link to the beliefs that helped shape Western civilization,” said Richard Austin, Sotheby’s Global Head of Books and Manuscripts.
“To encounter this shared piece of cultural heritage is to journey through millennia and connect with cultures and faiths told through one of humanity’s earliest and most enduring moral codes,” Austin added.
The ancient tablet, which is valued between $1 million and $2 million and is currently on public display at Sotheby’s New York, contains only nine of the commandments as found in the Book of Exodus. Its twenty lines of text omit “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain,” but instead advises followers to worship on Mount Gerizim, a holy site specific to Samaritans.
After the tablet was unearthed more than a century ago, its significance went unrecognized for decades as it served as a paving stone at an entrance to a home in Israel. Its Paleo-Hebrew script faced upwards and was exposed to foot traffic.
A scholar recognized its importance to many faiths and purchased the tablet in 1943.
Sotheby’s says the Ten Commandments tablet will be offered as a “single-lot sale” on Dec. 18.
“An extraordinary treasure from antiquity, inscribed with the moral code that underpins Western civilization,” Sotheby’s said, “this stone tablet is a bridge between faiths, regions and eras.”
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