A book believed to have been produced at one of the first Christian monasteries in Egypt around 250-350 AD will go up for auction in June.
The Crosby-Schøyen Codex, which is believed to be one of the oldest texts in existence, is worth between $2.8 million to $3.8 million, according to Christie’s auction house.
“It’s right at that period, that transitional period, when papyrus scroll starts turning into codex form,” Eugenio Donadoni, Christie’s senior specialist for books and manuscripts, told Reuters. “So, books as we know them today. And what we have in this book is the earliest known texts of two books of the Bible.”
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The 104 pages, or 52 leaves, were written by one scribe in Coptic on papyrus over a 40-year period. It contains the complete texts of two Bible book, including the first epistle of Peter and the Book of Jonah.
It is part of the Bodmer Papyri, which were discovered in the 1950s.
The codex was bought by the University of Mississippi, where it remained until 1981. It was acquired several times before being purchased by Dr. Martin Schøyen, a Norwegian manuscript collector in 1988.
Schøyen is now auctioning the manuscript alongside other pieces from his collection. The sale spans 1,300 years of cultural history and also includes other manuscripts such as the Holkham Hebrew Bible and the Geraardsbergen Bible, the auction house said.
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“The importance of the materials in this collection goes far beyond the scope of a private collection, or even a national public collection,” the auction house said on its website.
The codex is on display at Christie’s New York and will remain there until April 9. It will also be on display in Paris this month before the auction on June 11 in London.