A 1,500-year-old stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament is set to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s auction house in New York next month, with an estimated value of up to $2 million. The tablet, weighing 115 pounds and standing two feet tall, is the oldest inscribed stone bearing the Biblical laws and dates back to the Late Roman-Byzantine era.
Discovered in 1913 during excavations for a railway line in what is now southern Israel, the tablet lay forgotten for decades, even being used as paving outside a house for 30 years. Its significance was eventually recognized, and it was sold to a scholar in 1943 who appreciated its importance as a Samaritan Decalogue.
The tablet features 20 lines of Paleo-Hebrew script, closely following the verses from the Book of Exodus, but with a notable variation. Only nine of the 10 commandments are included, replacing “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain” with a directive to worship on Mount Gerizim, a sacred site in Samaritanism.
Sotheby’s global head of books and manuscripts, Richard Austin, described the tablet as a “vastly important historic artifact” and a “tangible link to the beliefs that helped shape Western civilization.” The auction will take place on 18 December, with the tablet on display at Sotheby’s New York showroom from 5 December.
This sale follows last year’s record-breaking auction of the Codex Sassoon, a 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible that sold for $38.1 million. The historic stone tablet’s sale is expected to attract significant interest from collectors, scholars, and institutions eager to own a piece of history.