NEW YORK — A Hebrew Bible more than 1,000 years old is set to go up for auction in New York for up to $50 million, Sotheby’s announced on Wednesday.
The Codex Sassoon – dating from the late ninth to early tenth centuries – is the earliest and most complete Hebrew Bible ever discovered.
It will be the most expensive historical document or manuscript ever to go under the hammer when it is auctioned off at Sotheby’s in May.
“(It) is undoubtedly one of the most important and unique texts in human history,” said Richard Austin, global head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s.
The Codex Sassoon is one of only two codices, or manuscripts, containing all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible that have survived into modern times.
It’s significantly more complete than the Aleppo Code and predates the Leningrad Code, two other famous early Hebrew Bibles, Sotheby’s said.
The Codex Sassoon Bible will be on display at Sotheby’s in New York on February 15, 2023. (Ed Jones/AFP)
The manuscript bridges the Dead Sea Scrolls – dating back to the third century B.C. – and the modern accepted form of the Hebrew Bible.
It is named after the previous owner, David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942), who assembled the world’s most important private collection of ancient Jewish texts.
The book was thought to have been lost for over 600 years after the destruction of a synagogue in northeastern Syria where it was kept, until it was found again in 1929, according to the New York Times. It has been privately owned since then and is currently owned by Swiss financier and collector Jacqui Safra.
“This is the first time the text has appeared in a form in which we can actually read and understand it,” Sharon Liberman Mintz, senior Judaica consultant at Sotheby’s, told the US newspaper.
Regarding the high price, Mintz said that the codex was expensive at the time, requiring over 100 animal skins to create it. She added that it was written by a single scribe.
“It’s a masterpiece of writing,” she said.
She also noted that it includes markings tracing the various owners over the years, showing the manuscript’s last owner before it disappeared when the synagogue in what is now the Syrian city of Markada was destroyed, until Sasoon bought it in Frankfurt.
The document is being auctioned for the first time in more than 30 years, with a presale estimate of $30 million to $50 million.
In November 2021, Sotheby’s sold one of the first printed copies of the US Constitution for $43 million, a record price for a historic manuscript.