On June 11, the oldest book in the world from a private collection and one of the oldest surviving books was auctioned in London (UK) for over £3 million ($3.8 million).
The auction for the Crosby-Schoyen Codex took place at Christie’s auction house, with participation from both live and online bidders.
One of the oldest surviving books recently sold for $3.8 million. (Source: PBS)
The starting price of this ancient book was £1.7 million. Ultimately, the Crosby-Schoyen Codex was sold for $3.8 million to an anonymous bidder.
The ancient book Crosby-Schoyen Codex was previously owned by Norwegian entrepreneur and rare book collector Martin Schoyen.
The content of the book includes the earliest known texts of two books of the Bible: Jonah and Peter 1. The book was discovered in Egypt in 1952.
The Crosby-Schoyen Codex consists of 104 pages, written in Coptic on papyrus at a monastery in Egypt around the 4th century AD.
Thus, this book is at least 1,600 years old and predates many other famous ancient texts, such as the Gutenberg Bible, which was produced in the early 1450s.
Although the price is quite impressive, it is not the highest price paid for a rare text. In 2023, the Sassoon Hebrew Bible, which is over 1,000 years old, was sold for a record price of $38.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York (USA).
This figure exceeds the $30.8 million that Microsoft founder Bill Gates paid in 1994 for the Codex Leicester manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci.
A rare copy of the first edition of the U.S. Constitution was sold for $43.2 million in New York in November 2021, becoming the most expensive historical document ever auctioned.
