The world's earliest-known complete stone inscription of the Ten Commandments, described as a "national treasure" of Israel, was sold at an auction in Beverly Hills for $850,000 (793,000 euros.) Show Chiseled in an early Hebrew script called Samaritan, and weighing 52 kilos, the roughly 1,500-year-old, 63 by 57 centimeter white marble slab was sold on Wednesday night at a public auction of ancient Biblical archaeology artifacts. The tablet lists nine of the 10 commonly known commandments, omitting "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" and replacing it with a rule for Samaritan worshippers. It was put up for sale by Rabbi Shaul Deutsch, the founder of the Living Torah Museum in New York. It was auctioned off under one condition: it must be displayed in a public museum, the Dallas-based auctioneer Heritage Auctions said. Archaeological treasure used as a paving stone for 30 years The tablet was probably inscribed during the late Roman or Byzantine era between 300 and 800 AD, and marked the entrance of an ancient synagogue that was likely destroyed by the Romans, according to Heritage Auctions. The tablet was discovered in 1913, during excavation for a railroad line near the modern city of Yavneh in Western Israel. After its discovery, it was used as a paving stone in a private courtyard for 30 years, with the inscription facing up. The foot traffic blurred several words over time, the auction house says. An archaeologist then owned the slab from 1943 to 2000, and the Israeli Antiquities Authorities approved export of the piece to the United States in 2005. The auction opened with a $300,000 bid on the tablet. The winning bidder has asked not to be identified. db/eg (Reuters, AP)
Heritage Auctions image of a stone tablet with a worn-down chiseled inscription of the Ten Commandments Thomson Reuters DALLAS (Reuters) - A 1,500-year-old stone tablet with the earliest known chiseled inscription of the Ten Commandments was sold at a U.S. auction on Wednesday for $850,000. The two-foot (61 cm) square slab of white marble that weighs about 115 pounds (50 kg) was sold in Beverly Hills, California, by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions to a buyer who not to be immediately identified. The tablet was put up for sale by Rabbi Shaul Deutsch, founder of the Living Torah Museum, in Brooklyn, New York, with the stipulation that the buyer must put it on public display, the auction house said. The tablet is chiseled with 20 lines of Samaritan script with principles that are fundamental to Judaism and Christianity. The inscription lists nine of the 10 commandments in the Book of Exodus, omitting "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" and replacing it with a rule for Samaritan worshippers, the auction house said. It was probably chiseled during the late Roman or Byzantine era, between 300 and 500 A.D., and marked the entrance of an ancient synagogue that was likely destroyed by the Romans, according to the auction house. MAMJODH/FlickrThe tablet was discovered in 1913 during excavation for a railroad line near the modern city of Yavneh in Western Israel. Someone, possibly a construction worker, acquired it and set it in a courtyard where it remained until 1943 when it was acquired by an archeologist, who owned it until his death in 2000. Deutsch acquired the tablet for temporary display through an agreement with the Israel Antiquities Authority and then bought it outright after a legal settlement, Heritage officials said. Deutsch said he wished to sell the tablet and other artifacts from his collection chronicling Jewish life and history back to antiquity to raise money for a makeover of his museum. He said he plans to transform the museum with more hands-on exhibits to attract younger visitors. "The new owner is under obligation to display the tablet for the benefit of the public," David Michaels, director of antiquities for Heritage Auctions, said in a statement. Two phone bidders pushed the sale price up from an opening live bid of $300,000, Heritage officials said.
Dmitriy Feldman svarshik/Shutterstock The Ten Commandments are, according to Christian question-and-answer site Got Questions, a sort of summary of the hundreds of other laws, regulations, and mandates given by God to the Israelites. The "Decalogue," as it's known, contains the foundational legal and moral principles that govern the spiritual lives of Christians and Jews around the world. In
Exodus 20 (and again in Deuteronomy 5), God delivers the commandments to Moses, who then gives them to his people. A later narrative, in Exodus 32, tells of the commandments having been inscribed on
tablets of stone directly by God's finger. Moses, enraged at seeing the Israelites worshipping a golden calf, smashes the tablets into pieces, as Oxford Reference reports. A couple of chapters later, in Exodus 34, the commandments are manifested on stone again, this time by
Moses chiseling them out per God's orders. According to Exodus 25, the original, broken tablets were enshrined into the Ark of the Covenant, a relic consisting of pieces of the Israelites'
history that accompanied them on their journey through the desert. Today, the ark — and, presumably, the contents within it — are claimed by one Christian group to be in a church in Ethiopia.
Matjaz Krivic/Getty Images According to Got Questions, the Ark of the Covenant — and, presumably, the remnants of the Ten Commandments tablets — bounces around the Biblical narrative here and there
before disappearing completely by 2 Chronicles 35. It is believed to have been captured by an enemy king, and that is the last anybody ever heard of it. Perhaps it was destroyed in war. Perhaps it was hidden away somewhere and remains, forgotten about, ready to be discovered by archaeologists. Meanwhile, according to Revelation 11, the ark is in heaven. However, a Christian group in Africa
— the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church — claims to have the ark, following a series of historical events that won't be rehashed here. Specifically, as Smithsonian Magazine reports, the group claims to keep the relic in a treasury building near the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in the town of Axum. Only one person, the guardian of the ark, is allowed to lay eyes on it. What happened to the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments?According to the biblical narrative, the first set of tablets, inscribed by the finger of God, (Exodus 31:18) were smashed by Moses when he was enraged by the sight of the Children of Israel worshiping a golden calf (Exodus 32:19) and the second were later chiseled out by Moses and rewritten by God (Exodus 34:1).
Do the 10 Commandment tablets exist today?Described as a "national treasure" of Israel, the stone was first uncovered in 1913 during excavations for a railroad station near Yavneh in Israel and is the only intact tablet version of the Commandments thought to exist.
Where are the real Ten Commandments?The 10 Commandments are in chapter 20 of Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament (sometimes called the Hebrew Bible). The full version in Exodus 20 has about 300 words. The briefer version below in the order they appear in the Bible has has just over 70 words.
Who received the tablets containing Ten Commandments?The two tablets upon which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. The book of Exodus (31: 18; 32: 15–16) tells of Moses receiving from God the 'tablets of the testimony' inscribed by 'the finger of God'.
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Where are the 10 commandments tablets now
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