UPDATE: Ancient Ten Commandments Tablet Auctioned in NY for $5M
A rare stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments was sold at an auction in New York Wednesday. The ancient tablet sold for more than $5 million, and now the anonymous buyer plans to donate it to an Israeli institution.
Sotheby's auction house said the tablet dates back to 300 to 800 A.D. and is carved in Paleo-Hebrew.
"This remarkable tablet is not only a vastly important historic artifact, but a tangible link to the beliefs that helped shape Western civilization," explained Richard Austin, Sotheby's Global Head of Books & Manuscripts. "To encounter this shared piece of cultural heritage is to journey through millennia and connect with cultures and faiths told through one of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes."
The marble slab is the oldest known tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments. It weighs 115 pounds and stands two feet tall. The stone tablet was discovered in 1913 during railroad excavations along the southern coast of Israel. Initially, it was not recognized as a historically significant artifact.
"The significance of the discovery went unrecognized for many decades, and for thirty years it served as a paving stone at the entrance to a local home, with the inscription facing upwards and exposed to foot traffic," Sotheby's states on their website.
"Fortunately, the text is all still legible, but it is most worn in the middle where people walked across it," Selby Kiffer, the international senior specialist for books and manuscripts at Sotheby's, told the New York Times.
In 1943, the tablet was sold to Jacob Kaplan, a scholar who recognized its value and importance to a "Samaritan Decalogue."
What makes this tablet truly unique is the 20 lines of text incised on it that follow the Ten Commandments found in the Book of Exodus. But apparently, due to its connection to the Samaritans, the engravings aren't a perfect match to scripture.
One departure from the familiar text is that the tablet omits the admonition "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain" but includes a new directive "to worship on Mount Gerizim" – a holy site specific to the Samaritans, Sotheby's explains.
While Sotheby's specialists call the tablet "an extraordinary treasure," some scholars are skeptical about its authenticity. "Objects from this region of the world are rife with fakes," Brian I. Daniels, the director of research and programs at the Penn Cultural Heritage Center in Philadelphia shared with the New York Times.
But he didn't totally dismiss the tablet, adding, "Maybe it's absolutely authentic, and this truly is a historic find."
Christopher Rollston, chair of the Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department at George Washington University told the outlet that the issue hinges on its discovery and that there is "zero documentation" from 1913.
"Sotheby's is stating that this Samaritan Ten Commandments inscription is circa 1,500 years old," he explained. "But there is no way that this can be known. After all, these were not found on an archaeological excavation. We don't even know who actually found them."
Rollston added, "The problem is that we have zero documentation from 1913, and since pillagers and forgers often concoct such stories to give an inscription an aura of authenticity, this story could actually just be a tall tale told by a forger or some antiquities dealer."
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