A marble tablet approximately 1,500 years old, containing an ancient Hebrew version of the biblical Ten Commandments, will be auctioned on December 18 by Sotheby's in New York. According to the auction house, this is the oldest known version of the Ten Commandments made of stone. However, it is notable that this version only includes nine of the ten commandments mentioned in the Book of Exodus, as the one prohibiting the use of God's name in vain is absent.
The tablet, which dates back to the Byzantine era, is expected to fetch an estimated price between one and two million dollars. Weighing 52 kilograms and standing around 60 centimeters tall, it is engraved in Paleo-Hebrew with twenty lines containing the commandments. Discovered in 1913 during excavations on the southern coast of what is now Israel, it served for decades as a doorway slab in a private residence without its significance being recognized.
In 1943, a scholar acknowledged its value and acquired it, although it is unclear what happened to it afterward or who is currently selling it. Sotheby's suggests that the tablet may have been part of an ancient synagogue or some building that was destroyed, either during the Roman invasion of the territory or during the Crusades in the 11th century.
As the Commandments are a pillar of both Jewish and Christian faiths, and also recognized in Islam, the auction house presents it as a symbol of the moral code that has cemented Western civilization and as an element that unites different beliefs, regions, and eras.
