Norwegian collector to sell ancient Christian manuscript

A 1700-year-old manuscript, the Crosby-Schøyen Codex, will be sold by auction house Christie’s next month and is expected to fetch up to £3 million ($5.7 million).

The ancient book from Egypt was written in Coptic on papyrus around 250-300 AD, according to carbon dating tests. It contains texts including the first complete epistle of Peter, the Book of Jonah and an Easter homily.

Written by a single scribe, the 104 pages are believed to have been discovered in the early 1950s by Swiss scholar Martin Bodmer and form part of a collection of texts known as the Bodmer Papyri. Their remarkable preservation has been attributed to the fact they were carefully buried in a jar in sand, as well as Egypt’s arid climate.

The Crosby-Schøyen Codex was bought by the University of Mississippi where it remained until 1981, and was acquired several times before being purchased by Norwegian manuscript collector Dr Martin Schøyen in 1988. The Codex is one of over 60 manuscripts currently being sold by Dr Schøyen, who has amassed one of the largest and most valuable manuscript collections in the world.

The Codex is expected to attract a great deal of interest from global collectors and institutions. However, scholars have expressed concerns about where the Codex will end up.

“There’s always the fear when something goes up for sale, it could go behind doors that would make it harder for researchers to access it,” Jordan Jones, an expert in biblical texts and archaeology at the University of Iowa told US publication Christianity Today.

Brent Nongbri, an expert in early Christian manuscripts and a professor at the Norwegian School of Theology said any major university that has a papyrus collection has the proper conditions for storing the Codex, the personnel to care for it and the systems for academics to study it.

“That’s the ideal setting for something like this,” he said.

Amanda Taylor