© 2025
In touch with the world ... at home on the High Plains
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
We recently completed the changeover to a new, much improved audio management system, including a new program scheduling computer, file servers, workstations and more secure and reliable IT networking between our studios in Garden City and Amarillo. This work involved thousands of audio files and lines of programming code, so you may hear some glitches in our programming as we "burn-in" the system in the coming days. We apologize for any disruptions to your listening. If you have questions or problems to report, please contact HPPR's Technical Director, Alex Fregger (afregger@hppr.org).

Sotheby's to auction off ancient Ten Commandments tablet

Sotheby's workers hold the stone tablet of the Ten Commandments that is scheduled for auction.
Timothy A. Clary
/
AFP
Sotheby's workers hold the stone tablet of the Ten Commandments that is scheduled for auction.

One of the earliest tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments is scheduled to go up for auction at Sotheby's on Wednesday. The auctioneer says it's a rare example of a complete tablet dating to C.E. 300-800.

The marble slab weighs 115 pounds, is approximately two feet tall, and is carved with Paleo-Hebrew script.

It was unearthed in 1913 during railroad excavations in the Ottoman Empire (in present-day Israel), but its significance was unrecognized for decades. It was even used as part of the entrance to a local home. The tablet's text is worn where people walked across it, a Sotheby's specialist told The New York Times.

This tablet has only nine of the ten commandments mentioned in the Book of Exodus — it's missing, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain." The tablet also instructs adherents to worship on Mount Gerizim, a holy site for Samaritans, near the modern-day city of Nablus.

"This remarkable tablet is not only a vastly important historic artifact, but a tangible link to the beliefs that helped shape Western civilization, said Richard Austin, Sotheby's Global Head of Books & Manuscripts.

Sotheby's has set the opening bid for the tablet at $1 million USD.

Copyright 2024 NPR

Sarah Ventre