Sotheby’s auction house is auctioning off the oldest known stone tablet with the Ten Commandments. The auction house announced that the approximately 1,500-year-old tablet with the ancient Hebrew text is to be auctioned on 18 December.
The tablet is dated to the period between 300 and 800. It is the only completely preserved example from the late Byzantine period. Sotheby’s hopes to realise proceeds of up to two million US dollars (around 1.9 million euros).
“This remarkable tablet is not only an extremely important historical artefact, but also a tangible link to the beliefs that helped shape Western civilisation,” said Sotheby’s Head of Books and Manuscripts, Richard Austin.
Encountering this shared piece of cultural heritage is a “journey through the millennia and a connection to cultures and beliefs told through one of humanity’s earliest and most enduring moral codes.”