Hommam Al Nassim 
A rare ancient manuscript has gone up for sale in London in June, as it is believed to date back to the dawn of Christianity, making it one of the oldest books in the world.
This book, known as the Crosby Shoin manuscript, was written in Coptic on papyrus around 250 to 350 AD.
The book, copied in a monastery in Upper Egypt, includes the First Epistle of Peter and the Book of Jonah, and is estimated to have a value of selling between $2.6 million and $3.8 million, according to Reuters.
Eugenio Donadoni, chief specialist in medieval and Renaissance manuscripts at Christie’s auction house, points out that the manuscript represents one of the oldest known texts of the two scriptures.
The 104-page book was copied over 40 years in a monastery in Upper Egypt and kept behind plexiglass.
Donadoni attributes the reason for preserving the manuscript to the dry climate of Egypt, pointing to the scarcity of books from the third and fourth centuries.
This manuscript was discovered in Egypt in the fifties of the last century, and kept by the University of Mississippi until 1981, before being acquired by the Norwegian manuscript collector Martin Schwein in 1988, and now, the manuscript will be displayed in the gallery “Christie” in New York from the second to the ninth of April and will be sold at auction in London on June 11.
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