Christianity’s oldest religious book, according to auction house Christie’s, is going on sale in June.
The Crosby-Schøyen Codex, written in Coptic script on papyrus in Egypt, dates to between 250-350AD.
It is also thought to be one of the oldest books in existence and could sell for up to $3.8m (£3m).
The liturgical book was produced in one of the first Christian monasteries and contains the complete texts of two Bible books.
The text is of “monumental importance as a witness to the earliest spread of Christianity around the Mediterranean,” said Eugenio Donadoni, senior specialist for books and manuscripts at Christies.
“The earliest monks in Upper Egypt in the earliest Christian monastery were using this very book to celebrate the earliest Easter celebrations, only a few hundred years after Christ and only a hundred or so years after the last Gospel was written.”
The book is part of the Bodmer Papyri, a collection of several texts which were discovered in the 1950s, and include Christian writings, Biblical extracts and pagan literature.
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