A marble tablet inscribed with nine of the Ten Commandments, said to be the oldest intact version of its kind in stone, is set to go under the hammer next month in a single-lot sale at Sotheby’s in New York. The artifact, which measures two feet (~61 cm) and weighs 115 pounds (~52 kg), is emerging on the market for the first time since 2016 with an estimated sale price of $2 million.
According to the auction house, the Commandments were inscribed into the tablet in Paleo-Hebrew script in the Late Roman-Byzantine Era (c. 300–800 CE). The slab was unearthed in 1913 during railway excavations near what was once known as Iamnia during the Roman-Byzantine period (the modern city of Yavneh in Israel and Jabneh to Palestinians, who were forced out following the 1948 Nakba). The object was being used as a paving stone at the threshold of a local residence for 30 years before its significance was recognized, Sotheby’s said.
There are 20 lines of text incised into the tablet, but only nine of the Ten Commandments are featured as found in the Book of Exodus, with the omission of “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain.” The original site of the tablet was most likely destroyed between 400–600 CE during the Roman invasions, or by the Crusaders in the 11th century. The tablet also includes an additional directive to conduct worship on the holy site of Mount Gerizim, sacred to the Samaritans.
According to a provenance provided by Sotheby’s, a scholar and archaeologist named Y. Kaplan purchased the tablet in 1943, publishing the first academic article on the artifact three years later to alert the world to its existence and importance as a Samaritan Decalogue. Antiques dealer Robert Deutsch acquired the tablet in the 1990s, soon followed by Rabbi Saul Deutsch (no relation) in 2005 for the Living Torah Museum in New York. It was last sold to Mitchell Stuart Cappell in 2016 for $850,000 in a sale orchestrated by Heritage Auctions, with one stipulation — it must be made available for public display.
Now, Cappell may be parting ways with the tablet if it sells at auction on December 18. The piece will be included in a presale exhibition at Sotheby’s in New York starting December 5.
“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,” Richard Austin, Sotheby’s global head of Books and Manuscripts, said in a statement.
