Earliest Known Stone of The TEN COMMANDMENTS Up For Auction

   
The earliest known stone inscription of the Ten Commandments is being auctioned in Beverly Hills on November 16, with an opening bid of $250,000 -- and a stipulation that any owner must put the tablet on public display.

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.

The director of ancient coins for Heritage Auctions, who will be conducting the sale said 

"The tablet's significance is testament to the deep roots and enduring power of the Commandments that still form the basis of three of the world's great religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam,

 The two-foot-square (0.18 square meter), 115-pound (52 kg) marble slab is inscribed in an early Hebrew script called Samaritan and most likely adorned a Samaritan synagogue or home in the ancient town of Jabneel, Palestine, which is now Yavneh in modern Israel,
It lists nine of the 10 commonly known Biblical Commandments from the Book of Exodus, with an additional Commandment to worship on the sacred mountain of Mount Gerizim, near Nablus, which is a now a city in the West Bank.

"You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in Vain" was deliberately left off the list to keep the total number of Commandments to 10, according to scholars.

   

The tablet's home was either destroyed by the Romans between 400 and 600 AD, or by the Crusaders in the 11th century, and the stone had lain buried in the rubble of the ruins for centuries before its discovery near Yavneh, according to Michael

"The workmen who found it did not recognize its importance and either sold or gave it to a local Arab man, who set the stone into the threshold of a room leading to his inner courtyard, with the inscription facing up,

"Some of the letters of the central part of the inscription are blurred -- but still readable under proper lighting -- either from the conditions of its burial or foot traffic while it was resting in the courtyard."

Thirty years later, in 1943, the man's son sold the stone to a Mr. Y. Kaplan, a municipal archaeologist

"He immediately recognized its importance as an extremely rare 'Samaritan Decalogue,' one of five such known stone inscriptions that date to the late Roman-Byzantine era (300-640 CE) or just after the Muslim invasion of the seventh century CE," adds Michaels.

CNN