A book from Egypt, which was written at the dawn of Christianity and is considered one of the oldest books in existence, will be auctioned in London in June, UNN reports citing Reuters.
Details
According to Christie's, the Crosby-Schoen Codex, written in Coptic on papyrus around 250-350 AD and created in one of the first Christian monasteries, is estimated at $2.6-3.8 million.
"This is exactly the period, the transitional period, when the papyrus scroll begins to transform into a form of codex," said Eugenio Donadoni, Christie's Senior Specialist in Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts. - "So, books as we know them today. And what we have in this book are the earliest known texts of two books of the Bible.
The 104 pages (52 letters) were written by a single scribe over a period of 40 years in a monastery in Upper Egypt and are preserved behind plexiglass. The codex contains the First Epistle of Peter and the Book of Jonah.
Donadoni explained its preservation by the arid climate of Egypt, adding that only a few books from the third and fourth centuries have survived to this day.
"All of the major finds of Christian manuscripts that we had in the 20th century and the late 19th century are concentrated in Egypt in these particular climatic conditions," he said.
The Codex is being exhibited at Christie's in New York from April 2 to 9, and on June 11 it will be sold at auction in London.
Addendum
The codex was discovered in Egypt in the 1950s and acquired by the University of Mississippi, where it remained until 1981. The Norwegian manuscript collector Dr. Martin Scheuen acquired it in 1988 and is now auctioning it off along with some other items from his Scheuen Collection, one of the largest private manuscript collections in the world.