The world’s oldest privately-held book, a rare and ancient text, was auctioned in London for over £3 million ($3.9 million).
The Crosby-Schoyen Codex, which was once owned by Norwegian businessman and avid book collector Martin Schoyen, contains the earliest complete copies of two biblical texts: the book of Jonah and Peter’s first epistle.
The bidding at Christie’s auction house began at £1.7 million, generating significant interest both online and in the room. The codex eventually sold for £3,065,000 ($3,898,000) including taxes, purchased by an anonymous phone bidder.
This ancient manuscript, discovered by Egyptian farmers in the 1950s, dates back to the fourth century AD, making it over 1,600 years old—much older than well-known texts like the Gutenberg Bible from the 1450s.
Written in Coptic script on double-sided papyrus leaves, the codex is now preserved between plexiglass plates, showcasing significant advancements in writing technology at the time when single-sided scrolls were more commonly used.
The auction also featured twelve other valuable pieces from the Schoyen Collection, a vast collection of over 20,000 artifacts that span 5,000 years of history, from 3,500 BC to the present day.
Although the sale is notable, it did not reach the record set for the highest price paid for a rare text. Last year, the Codex Sassoon, a Hebrew Bible more than 1,000 years old, sold for $38.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York, setting a new benchmark.
This amount surpassed the $30.8 million Microsoft founder Bill Gates paid in 1994 for Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester manuscript.
