Christie's presented a collection of Christian liturgical texts written in Coptic, known as "one of the oldest existing copies of the Bible," at an auction in London today, fetching £3.06 million ($3.89 million). The Egyptian manuscript known as "Crosby Schoyen" dates back to the dawn of Christianity and is considered one of the oldest books in the world currently. It is one of the earliest Christian liturgical manuscripts.
"Crosby Schoyen" is written in Coptic on papyrus and is approximately from the period between 250 and 350 AD, created in one of the oldest Christian monasteries. This book, which contains 104 pages (52 sheets), was copied by a single scribe over 40 years in a monastery in Upper Egypt and has been kept behind glass. The manuscript includes the First Epistle of Peter and the Book of Jonah.
The manuscript was discovered in Egypt in the 1950s and was acquired by the University of Mississippi, where it was kept until 1981. It was then obtained by Norwegian manuscript collector Martin Schoyen in 1988 and is now being sold at auction alongside other notable pieces from his collection, which is one of the largest private manuscript collections in the world.
However, the amount for which the manuscript was sold is far from the record figures reached by some other ancient manuscripts, such as the Sassoon manuscript, the oldest Hebrew Bible, which sold for over $38 million last year at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. Additionally, Microsoft founder Bill Gates paid $30.8 million in 1994 for the Codex Leicester by Leonardo da Vinci.
