The world’s oldest Hebrew Bible is up for auction.
On the 15th (local time), Sotheby’s, an art auction house, announced that it would auction the Hebrew Bible, ‘Codex Sassoon’, in May.
Sotheby’s introduced the Codex Sassoon as the oldest and most complete Hebrew Bible in the world, an 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible.
Sotheby’s put the estimated price of the Codex Sassoon winning bid at 30 million to 50 million dollars (approximately 38.7 to 64.5 billion won). If the bidding is successful at this price, it will break the record for the highest price ever for a book and ancient document, surpassing the $43.2 million (approximately 55.3 billion won) that billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin won for the first edition of the U.S. Constitution two years ago.
According to Sotheby’s, Codex Sassoon is estimated to have been made in the late 9th or early 10th century, and is a super-large book with 396 sheets of parchment bound together, measuring 13 cm in thickness and weighing 12 kg.
The Codex Sassoon, made up of 24 booklets, also includes the Old Testament, known to Jews as the Tanakh.
“It cannot be denied that it is one of the most important and outstanding documents in human history,” said Richard Austin, general manager of Sotheby’s Books and Documents Division.
First sold in the early 11th century by a man named Calaf ben Abraham, the Codex Sassoon was dedicated to a synagogue in northeastern Syria until the 13th century. Since the synagogue was completely destroyed by the attack of the Timur Empire in 1400, its whereabouts were unknown for nearly 600 years. However, it reappeared in 1929 when David Solomon Sassoon bought it. The name Codex Sassoon is also derived from the name of David Solomon Sassoon.
The book was sold to the British Rail Pension Fund in 1978 for $320,000, and 11 years later it was sold to Jackie Safra, a Lebanese-Swiss banker, for $3.1 million.
Sotheby’s will open the book to the public for the first time on the 22nd in London, England, and exhibit it in Tel Aviv, Israel at the end of March. The auction will be held in New York in May.
Source: Donga