A guide believed to have been produced at one of many first Christian monasteries in Egypt round 250-350 AD will go up for public sale in June.

The Crosby-Schøyen Codex, which is believed to be one of many oldest texts in existence, is price between $2.8 million to $3.8 million, in accordance with Christie’s public sale home.

“It is proper at that interval, that transitional interval, when papyrus scroll begins turning into codex type,” Eugenio Donadoni, Christie’s senior specialist for books and manuscripts, informed Reuters. “So, books as we all know them right this moment. And what we now have on this guide is the earliest identified texts of two books of the Bible.”

The 104 pages, or 52 leaves, had been written by one scribe in Coptic on papyrus over a 40-year interval. It incorporates the whole texts of two Bible guide, together with the primary epistle of Peter and the Ebook of Jonah.

It’s a part of the Bodmer Papyri, which had been found within the Fifties.

The codex was purchased by the College of Mississippi, the place it remained till 1981. It was acquired a number of instances earlier than being bought by Dr. Martin Schøyen, a Norwegian manuscript collector in 1988.

Schøyen is now auctioning the manuscript alongside different items from his assortment. The sale spans 1,300 years of cultural historical past and likewise consists of different manuscripts such because the Holkham Hebrew Bible and the Geraardsbergen Bible, the public sale home stated.

“The significance of the supplies on this assortment goes far past the scope of a non-public assortment, or perhaps a nationwide public assortment,” the public sale home stated on its web site.

The codex is on show at Christie’s New York and can stay there till April 9. It should even be on show in Paris this month earlier than the public sale on June 11 in London.

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