A marble tablet presented by Sotheby’s as the oldest in the world engraved with the Ten Commandments was sold for more than $5 million on Wednesday, December 18, the auction house announced in New York, despite questions about its authenticity.
After a battle lasting several minutes at the company’s headquarters, the 52 kg object, which according to Sotheby’s dates back to a period between the year 300 and 800 during the Byzantine Roman period, was sold for $4.2 million, or $5,004,000 including fees. Sotheby’s had estimated it at between $1 million and $2 million.
Discovered in 1913 during excavations for the construction of a railway in the current territory of Israel, the tablet bears the inscription, in paleo-Hebrew alphabet, of verses from nine of the ten commandments which appear in the Bible and the Torah.
“The person who dug it up didn’t realize its importance and took it home to use as paving. It remained there for around thirty years, until an archaeologist living in Israel, Dr.r Jacob Kaplan, recognize its importance and buy it »explained to Agence France-Presse Sharon Liberman Mintz, specialist in Jewish texts at Sotheby’s New York, during a presentation of the object in early December.
“Riddled with fakes”
The stone then passed through the Torah Museum in Brooklyn, then was purchased by a private collector, its last owner before the sale. According to the Sotheby’s specialist, “there is no other stone of this type in private hands (…) all other pieces are small fragments » and are found in museums.
Other experts cited by the New York Times called, before the sale, for caution given the difficulty of authenticating such an object. “Objects from this region are riddled with fakes”declared the director of research at the Penn Cultural Heritage Center in Philadelphia, Brian Daniels, while believing that the latter can be ” authentic “.
“There’s no way to know.” when does the stone date back to, added the chairman of the department of classical and Near Eastern languages and civilizations at George Washington University, Christopher Rollston.
In its press release announcing the result of the sale, Sotheby’s states that “this historic object has been studied by the greatest specialists in the field and cited in numerous scientific articles and works, the most recent of which was published at the beginning of this year”.
