1,500 year-old Ten Commandments tablet heads to auction in Los Angles
Thou shalt not covet … unless you are coveting the world's oldest known example of a stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments.
The world's oldest slab with the Decalogue will be up for auction until Nov. 16 in Beverly Hills, California. The 2-foot-long (60 centimeters), 200-lb. (90 kilograms) marble slab, dubbed the "Living Torah," is likely 1,500 to 1,700 years old, according to Heritage Autions, which is running the auction
"There is nothing more fundamental to our shared heritage than the 10 Commandments," David Michaels, director of antiquities for Heritage Auctions,
The marble slab, which contains 20 carved lines of biblical injunctions, was discovered in 1913 in Israel, after construction workers began excavating for a railroad. An Arab man set the marble in his courtyard, where decades of foot traffic wore down the inscriptions, Michaels said.
In 1943, the slab was purchased by a man named Y. Kaplan, who then brought it to noted biblical scholars, according to Michaels. Based on the shape and content of the text, scholars concluded that it was an ancient form of Samaritan, an archaic mixture of Aramaic and Hebrew, that dated to between A.D. 300 and 500. The tablets then changed hands a few more times, and were last purchased in 2005 by Rabbi Saul Deutsch for the Living Torah Museum in Brooklyn, New York, according to the auction house.
The world's oldest slab with the Decalogue will be up for auction until Nov. 16 in Beverly Hills, California. The 2-foot-long (60 centimeters), 200-lb. (90 kilograms) marble slab, dubbed the "Living Torah," is likely 1,500 to 1,700 years old, according to Heritage Autions, which is running the auction
"There is nothing more fundamental to our shared heritage than the 10 Commandments," David Michaels, director of antiquities for Heritage Auctions,
The marble slab, which contains 20 carved lines of biblical injunctions, was discovered in 1913 in Israel, after construction workers began excavating for a railroad. An Arab man set the marble in his courtyard, where decades of foot traffic wore down the inscriptions, Michaels said.
In 1943, the slab was purchased by a man named Y. Kaplan, who then brought it to noted biblical scholars, according to Michaels. Based on the shape and content of the text, scholars concluded that it was an ancient form of Samaritan, an archaic mixture of Aramaic and Hebrew, that dated to between A.D. 300 and 500. The tablets then changed hands a few more times, and were last purchased in 2005 by Rabbi Saul Deutsch for the Living Torah Museum in Brooklyn, New York, according to the auction house.
