Oldest book with Bible texts sold for millions at auction in London
Published: Tuesday, Jun 11th 2024, 19:50
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One of the oldest books in the world has been auctioned off in London for the equivalent of around 3.5 million Swiss francs. As the auction house Christie's announced on Tuesday, it went under the hammer for exactly 3.06 million pounds.
The Crosby-Schoyen Codex, which is around 1600 years old, is therefore the oldest book with Bible texts. It contains the earliest complete copy of the Book of Jonah and the First Epistle of Peter.
According to the auction house, it is also the oldest book in private hands. According to Christie's, it comprises 51 of the original 68 papyrus pages. The lines in Coptic script were written down by a monk in what is now Egypt in the third or fourth century.
The book was found together with other papyrus and parchment documents in Egypt in the early 1950s and was initially acquired by a Swiss collector. According to the auction house, the manuscript changed hands several times and belonged, among others, to the US collector Margaret Reed Crosby, after whom it is partly named. The last owner before the auction was the Norwegian Martin Schoyen, to whom the second part of the name goes back. The name of the new owner was not disclosed.
The sale price is far below that of similar documents sold at auction. In 2023, a Hebrew Bible more than 1,000 years old was auctioned off in New York for over 38 million dollars. Microsoft founder Bill Gates paid 30.8 million dollars for Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester in 1994. The most expensive historical document to date, one of the first prints of the US Constitution, was sold by auction house Sotheby's for 43 million dollars in 2021.
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