Thousand-year-old bible bought by a man named Moses

The Codex Sassoon, one of the earliest surviving example of a single-volume Hebrew Bible, has sold at auction for $US38.1 million ($A57.2 million).

Sotheby’s auction house in New York, which valued the bible between $US30m-$US50m, said the sale price is the highest for any written document, although it did not break the auction record for an historical document.

The 1100-year-old bible was purchased by former US ambassador to Romania, Alfred H Moses, on behalf of the American Friends of ANU and donated to ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, where it will join the collection, Sotheby’s said.

The manuscript was exhibited at the ANU Museum in March as part of a worldwide tour before the auction.

Sotheby’s Judaica specialist, Sharon Liberman Mintz, said the price, which includes the auction house’s fee, “reflects the profound power, influence, and significance of the Hebrew Bible, which is an indispensable pillar of humanity”.

In 2021, a rare copy of the US Constitution sold for $US43m. Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester sold for $US31m in 1994.

Mintz said she was “absolutely delighted by the auction result and that Codex Sassoon will shortly be making its grand and permanent return to Israel, on display for the world to see”.

The Codex Sassoon is believed to have been fabricated in the ninth or 10th century.

It got its name in 1929 when it was purchased by David Solomon Sassoon, a son of an Iraqi Jewish business magnate who filled his London home with his collection of Jewish manuscripts.

Sassoon’s estate was broken up after he died and the biblical codex was sold by Sotheby’s in Zurich in 1978 to the British Rail Pension Fund for about $US320,000.

with PA