1,100 Year Old Hebrew Bible Sells for $38.1 Million

Appearing at auction for the first time in more than 30 years, Codex Sassoon was acquired by Ambassador Alfred H. Moses of Washington, DC and the Moses family on behalf of the American Friends of ANU and was gifted to ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, Israel to become part of its world-renowned collection. The hammer fell after a 4-minute bidding battle between 2 determined bidders. 

The record-setting price surpasses the 1994 sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester manuscript, which achieved $30.8 million.

Codex Sassoon was recently on public exhibition at the ANU in March as part of Sotheby’s international traveling exhibition tour in advance of the auction, which also included exhibitions at Sotheby’s galleries in London and Los Angeles, and at Southern Methodist University’s Bridwell Library in Dallas, Texas. Across all exhibitions, including at Sotheby’s New York, the Codex attracted more than 20,000 visitors.

The Hebrew bible has long been one of the foundational cornerstones of civilizations and communities around the world, and is arguably the most influential book in human history.

As the earliest and most complete Hebrew bible extent - more than a millennium old - Codex Sassoon carries an incalculable influence as one of, if not the most, crucial religious sources to ever exist or have been discovered from ancient times. Providing critical insight into the development and spread of Abrahamic civilizations, the aforementioned text imparts a nearly meticulous record of the canonical Hebrew Scriptures: the Torah, the Nevi’im and the Ketuvim.