A stone tablet that was described by Sotheby’s as the oldest in the world inscribed with the Ten Commandments sold on Wednesday for just over $5 million to an anonymous buyer who plans to donate it to an Israeli institution, the auction house said.
The sale came after experts had raised questions about the item’s provenance and authenticity.
Sotheby’s said the tablet was about 1,500 years old, from the late Roman-Byzantine era. It weighs 115 pounds, is two feet long and is carved in an early version of Hebrew, now called Paleo-Hebrew, the auction house said.
Sotheby’s had estimated that the tablet would sell for between $1 million and $2 million. But it sold for $5.04 million after more than 10 minutes of intense bidding, Sotheby’s said.
“The result reflects the unparalleled importance of this artifact,” Richard Austin, Sotheby’s global head of books and manuscripts, said in a statement. “To stand before this tablet is an experience unlike any other — it offers a direct connection to the shared roots of faith and culture that continue to shape our world today.”
According to the man who discovered the tablet in 1943, Jacob Kaplan, the stone was found in 1913 while a railway was being built near the coast of what is today southern Israel. It was used as a paving stone at a home, and was sunk into the earth with its inscription facing up, Mr. Kaplan said at the time.
Mr. Kaplan, who died in 1989, published his findings in a scholarly journal, The Bulletin of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society, in 1947. The tablet made its way to an Israeli antiquities dealer in 1995 and then to the Living Torah Museum in Brooklyn. It was bought in 2016 by a collector, Mitchell S. Cappell, for $850,000; he sold it at Sotheby’s New York on Wednesday.
In an article published in The New York Times last week, experts expressed caution about the tablet.
Brian I. Daniels, the director of research and programs at the Penn Cultural Heritage Center in Philadelphia, said in an interview that “objects from this region of the world are rife with fakes.”
Still, he said, “Maybe it’s absolutely authentic, and this truly is a historic find.”
Some scholars said it was possible that the stone could have been carved around the time it was discovered, rather than in the late Roman-Byzantine era.
“Sotheby’s is stating that this Samaritan Ten Commandments inscription is circa 1,500 years old,” Christopher A. Rollston, the chairman of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at George Washington University, said in an email last week. “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.”
Dr. Rollston also questioned whether the tablet had actually been a paving stone at a home when it was found in 1913.
“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,” he said.
Selby Kiffer, the international senior specialist for books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s, had cited the wear and weathering of the stone as a key to determining its age. He also pointed to the Paleo-Hebrew lettering, saying: “The script is a key to it. We know when it went out of common usage.”
The tablet contains curious variations on the Ten Commandments as they are commonly known. It omits the admonition, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain,” and includes a directive to worship on Mount Gerizim, a sacred site for the Samaritans in what is today the West Bank.
Dr. Rollston raised a question about the Mount Gerizim commandment in particular. “Forgers during the past 150 years, when they fabricate their forgeries, often throw in surprising content,” he said. “And they do this so as to garner more interest in their forgery.”
The post A Ten Commandments Tablet Sells for More Than $5 Million at Auction appeared first on New York Times.
