The Crosby-Schøyen Codex, one of the earliest books in existence, is expected to bring in between $2.6 million and $2.8 million at an auction at Christie’s on June 11. The Christian liturgical book was written in the ancient Egyptian language Coptic on papyrus somewhere between the 3rd and 4th centuries.
It’s believes that a single scribe wrote the 104-page codex over a 40-year period at a monastery in Egypt. Part of the Bodmer Papryi, a set of biblical texts discovered in the 1950s, it features the first epistle of Peter and the Book of Jonah. It’s currently owned by Norwegian manuscript collector Martin Schøyen, who purchased it in 1988.
“The Crosby-Schøyen is one of the earliest witnesses to a development in cultural and textual transmission and in the history of the book that would not be rivaled in significance until Gutenberg’s printing press and the 20th-century revolution in electronic publishing and communication,” said Eugenio Donadoni, senior specialist for books and manuscripts at Christie’s.
The codex is well-preserved because of the “conducive climactic conditions” in Egypt, according to Christie’s. It’s currently on view at the auction house in New York through April 9.
