Sotheby’s will sell the oldest inscribed tablet of the Ten Commandments in a single-lot sale in December.
The 115-pound, two-foot tall marble tablet is approximately 1,500 years old and inscribed in Paleo-Hebrew script. It has an estimate of $1 million to $2 million and will be offered by the auction house’s books and manuscripts department on December 18.
“We understood how powerful the object was and we were really thrilled to be able to offer it for sale to the public,” Sharon Liberman Mintz, Sotheby’s international senior specialist of Judaica, books, and manuscripts, told ARTnews.
Dating to the Late Roman-Byzantine Era (ca. 300–800 CE), the tablet was unearthed in 1913 during railway excavations along the southern coast of Israel. Its historical significance was not recognized for three decades until it was sold to a scholar in 1943. This resulted in the tablet being used as a paving stone at the entrance to a local home, with the inscription facing up and exposed to foot traffic, according to a press release from Sotheby’s.
“This is really one-of-a-kind,” Mintz told ARTnews. “It’s one of the most important historic artifacts that I’ve ever handled.”
Mintz was Sotheby’s lead contact with financier Jacob (Jacqui) Safra when the auction house landed the consignment for the oldest surviving, nearly complete Hebrew Bible last year. The 1,100-year old volume, known as the Codex Sassoon, sold for $38.1 million to the American Friends of the ANU Museum of Jewish People in Tel Aviv, making it the second-most expensive document sold at auction.
And in September, Sotheby’s sold the earliest, most complete Hebrew Bible from medieval Spain for $7 million. The 700-year-old, 768-page manuscript, known as the Shem Tova Bible, also came from Safra’s collection.
The passing of national laws regarding the export of antiquities, as well as international treaties on the trafficking of stolen and looted items, explain why artifacts such as this one typically do not appear at auction. “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.
Mintz said that the consignor of the marble tablet went to Sotheby’s with all the correct export licenses and sufficient provenance information. “That’s the first question one always asks,” Liberman Mintz said.
Interest in Judaica offered at auction has also grown among institutions. Last year, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston both opened galleries focused on Jewish ritual art. “It’s something that they’re looking to get, and they only want masterpieces,” Mintz said. “They want the best of the best, as is correct for these important museums. Therefore, when a piece of this sort will come to market there’s a lot of demand because you have both institutional and private collectors who are excited about the opportunities.”
In December 2020, Sotheby’s also sold 68 lots of Judaica from the Sassoon Family Collection. Mintz said even during the Covid pandemic, the items garnered interest online from bidders in East Asian, Europe, Israel, and the US. She expects the same kind of global activity for the marble tablet. “This is such a broad audience with interest in one of the foundational objects from antiquity that underpins Western civilization,” Mintz told ARTnews. “It’s such a bridge between cultures and faiths and time. It’s exciting.”
