Hommam Al Nassim 
“Christie’s” Auction House in London sold a collection of Christian liturgical texts written in the Coptic language, known as “Crosby-Schoen”, for 3.06 million pounds sterling.
The Egyptian manuscript “Crosby-Schoen” dates back to the dawn of Christianity and is considered one of the oldest books currently in existence in the world.
Its age is estimated to be between 250 and 350 AD, and it was written in one of the oldest Christian monasteries. The manuscript, which contains 104 pages (52 pages), includes the First Epistle of Peter and the Book of Jonah.
The manuscript was discovered in Egypt in the 1950s and was kept by the University of Mississippi until 1981, when it was acquired by Norwegian manuscript collector Martin Schoen in 1988.
Schoen has now decided to sell it at auction along with some other highlights from his private collection, one of the largest private manuscript collections in the world.
It is noteworthy that the amount for which the manuscript was sold is very far from the records reached by some other ancient manuscripts.
For example, the Sassoon Manuscript, the oldest Hebrew Bible, was sold for more than $38 million last year during an auction organized by” Sotheby’s” in New York.
“Microsoft” founder Bill Gates paid $30.8 million in 1994 to buy Leonardo da Vinci’s Leicester manuscript.
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