One of the earliest tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments is scheduled to go up for auction at Sotheby’s on Wednesday. The auctioneer says it’s a rare example of a complete tablet dating to C.E. 300-800.
The marble slab weighs 115 pounds, is approximately two feet tall, and is carved with Paleo-Hebrew script.
It was unearthed in 1913 during railroad excavations in the Ottoman Empire (in present-day Israel), but its significance was unrecognized for decades. It was even used as part of the entrance to a local home. The tablet’s text is worn where people walked across it, a Sotheby’s specialist told The New York Times.
This tablet has only nine of the ten commandments mentioned in the Book of Exodus — it’s missing, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain.” The tablet also instructs adherents to worship on Mount Gerizim, a holy site for Samaritans, near the modern-day city of Nablus.
“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 & Manuscripts.
Sotheby’s has set the opening bid for the tablet at $1 million USD.
