1,500 years old: Earliest inscribed tablet of Ten Commandments to be auctioned

Auction house Sotheby’s New York plans to auction the oldest inscribed tablet of the Ten Commandments next month.

The marble tablet, weighing 115 pounds (52 kilograms) and standing two feet tall, is believed to be around 1,500 years old and features Paleo-Hebrew inscriptions.

“We recognized the object’s powerful significance and are thrilled to offer it for public sale,” Sharon Liberman Mintz, Sotheby’s international Judaica specialist, tells ARTnews.

The tablet was discovered in 1913 during railway construction on Israel’s southern coast but was initially ignored. At one point, it was used as a paving stone outside a home, before its significance became clear, the outlet reports.

Estimated to fetch between $1-2 million, it will be presented on December 18.

Sotheby's Will Auction Oldest Inscribed Tablet of Ten Commandments

“It is rare for there to be exceptionally important pieces from the Holy Land, which have left Israel before 1978,” Mintz said in reference to the year Israel passed its antiquities law. https://t.co/tseqzB76Ke

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