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Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Ancient Samaritan Decalogue for sale

WHAT, AGAIN? The Oldest Stone Tablet Carved With the Ten Commandments Is Up for Sale. The single-lot sale is estimated to fetch at least $1 million (Adam Schrader, Artnet News).
The oldest stone tablet depicting the Ten Commandments of Jewish and Christian faiths will be auctioned, more than a hundred years after it was first discovered.

The marble tablet, which weighs 115 pounds and measures about two feet in height, will go on display at Sotheby’s New York beginning December 5. It will then hit the block in a single-lot sale on December 18, with an estimate of $1–2 million.

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As the article notes, this same artifact was sold in 2016 for $850,000. This article says that the buyer is unknown, but this Daily Mail article (which also has more photos) names a buyer.

As always, I very much encourage the new buyer to donate it to a museum.

Background on the tablet, its discovery, and its previous sales is here (cf. here) and links. Cross-file under Samaritan Watch and Hebrew Epigraphy.

UPDATE (20 November): I have deleted the quote from the Daily Mail. Click through to their article if you want to know what they say. As far as I can tell (see here), the current owner remains anonymous.

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