A book from Egypt put up for auction in London may be the oldest in the world, experts have suggested.
The Crosby-Schoyen Codex “revolutionised the study of Christianity” and could be sold for more than £3 million ($3.813 million).
The oldest complete text of the book of Jonah, the codex was written around the third century AD and buried for more than 1,500 years. It will go on sale at Christie’s auction house in London on June 11.
“All of the oldest books in the world are roughly dated and have now been re-dated to the third or fourth century,” Eugenio Donadoni, a senior specialist in books and manuscripts at Christie’s, told the BBC.
“This (codex) was previously dated (to) the second, but they’re all around third or fourth. This could be the earliest, but you can’t say with absolute position.”
Donadoni said the codex is of huge significance in understanding the spread of early Christianity.
“It’s a cornerstone of early faith and a witness to the earliest spread of Christianity around the Mediterranean.
“What’s particularly fascinating about it is that it’s a self consciously assembled compilation of texts for the celebration of one of the earliest Easters and monastic communities in upper Egypt.
“It’s one of the three major finds of the 20th century that revolutionised the study of Christianity.
“We’re talking about early Christians finding their feet as Christians, still steeped in Jewish traditions.”
The codex was discovered as part of a larger trove, found buried in a jar at the base of a mountain near the small town of Dishna in 1952.
It was acquired by the University of Mississippi in 1955, and eventually bought by Norwegian manuscript collector Dr. Martin Schoyen in 1988.
Schoyen’s collection — at over 20,000 texts — is one of the largest in existence. It includes 400 fragments of early copies of the Bible.
The codex — the oldest known book in a private collection in the world — is one of 61 manuscripts being sold at Christie’s by Schoyen.
Also for sale is a 13th-century Hebrew manuscript expected to sell for more than £1.5 million.
On its website, Christie’s said: “The sale spans 1,300 years of cultural history and includes world heritage manuscripts such as the Crosby-Schoyen Codex, the Holkham Hebrew Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus and the Geraardsbergen Bible, but also Greek literature, humanist masterpieces, early English law, a historically important Scottish chronicle, and the earliest known book-binding.”