1,500-year-old tablet containing Moses’ Ten Commandments will go on sale in New York

The oldest known stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments could fetch up to $2 million at auction in New York City on Wednesday.

The 1,500-year-old marble slab was found in Israel in 1913, but then sat as a paving stone at the entrance of a house for 30 years before its significance was noticed.

The auction, at Sotheby’s in Manhattan, closed at 10am ET and results should be announced sometime today.

The 155-pound tablet contains Paleo-Hebrew scripture text used to record the Bible.

There are twenty lines of text engraved in the stone that closely match Bible verses known in Christian and Jewish traditions that believe God gave Moses the Ten Commandments as a guide to life.

However, it contains only nine of the commandments found in the Book of Exodus, omitting “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain” while including a new directive: worshiping on Mount Gerizim, a holy place specifically for the Samaritans. .

Sharon Liberman Mintz, Judaics specialist at Sotheby’s, said: ‘This is the earliest known complete tablet of the Ten Commandments, which of course form the moral code underlying Western civilization.

‘It’s an astonishing find. When you see it, you feel the resonance of the communication.’

The tablet’s original location – probably a synagogue – was probably destroyed by the Romans during invasions of the region between 400 and 600 AD or during the Crusades in the 11th century.

The tablet is the only complete tablet from the late Byzantine period on which the Ten Commandments are written.

It was discovered during railway excavations near the sites of early synagogues, mosques and churches.

The first two lines on the tablet are dedications and then the commandments are listed.

In 1943, the tablet was purchased by a scholar who discovered its meaning after translating the Paleo-Hebrew script.

The scholar, known only as Mr. Kaplan, then kept the treasure until the 1990s, when it was sold.

It was sold again in 2005 and then purchased in 2016 by its current owner, American collector Dr. Mitchell Stuart Cappell.

The story of Moses and the tablets is told in the Book of Exodus, which details how the Israelites were led from slavery in Egypt to Israel.

For Moses, the team speculated that it could be him who would receive the laws of God or strike his staff into the water to part the Red Sea, while the figure is placed at the foot of a mountain.

Scripture states that God called Moses to Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights and instructed him on how to build the tabernacle and offer sacrifices.

When God finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him two stone tablets, the Ten Commandments.

The original stone slabs have never been found, but the slabs being auctioned in New York are the oldest surviving.

However, archaeologists have recently discovered evidence of the Biblical city where Moses is said to have taken the Israelites.

The Bible states that the Israelites entered the Promised Land, also known as Canaan, around 1406 to 1407 B.C. reached after wandering through the desert for forty years.

The Israel Antiquities Authority works in Zanoah, which is mentioned in the Old Testament, uncovering stone walls, pottery and other artifacts dating back more than 3,200 years.

The £155 tablet contains Paleo-Hebrew scripture texts used to record the Bible.

The site had walls formed with rows of large, white rocks, which they believed were retaining walls for agricultural terraces used to create flat planting areas and to protect steeper ground from erosion.

Preserved pottery was also recovered from the ground, one of which had a stamp on the handle reading ‘of the king’, in honor of King Hezekiah’s reign in Judah in 701 BC.

The life of Hezekiah is described in the Bible book of 2 Kings, chapters 18-20.

In 2 Chronicles the king is said to have reopened Solomon’s Temple, known as ‘the First Temple’ and built on the site where God created Adam.

The landscape was littered with pottery fragments, about 20 percent of which dated from the time when the Israelites are said to have arrived after forty years of wandering in the wilderness; the rest were manufactured over the next 900 years.

A decorated fragment of a cosmetic bowl made of white limestone.

“It has a wide rim decorated with a decoration of three concentric bands, separated by holes: the external and internal bands are narrow and provided with a rope decoration, while the central band is wide and has an interrupted grid pattern,” the researchers shared in the research. study.