# Codex Sassoon > An unnamed scribe, with two later Masoretes - c. 900 (radiocarbon 880-960 CE) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/codex-sassoon-scribe/codex-sassoon/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-19 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** An unnamed scribe, with two later Masoretes - **Date:** c. 900 (radiocarbon 880-960 CE) - **Medium:** Iron-gall ink on parchment, Tiberian vocalisation, cantillation and Masorah - **Dimensions:** About 30 x 36 cm; 396 leaves, 792 pages - **Object type:** Manuscript - **Period:** Near Eastern, tenth century - **Current location:** ANU - Museum of the Jewish People, Tel Aviv - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary An almost complete Hebrew Bible written about the year 900, sold at Sotheby's New York on 17 May 2023 for a hammer price of USD 33.5 million and USD 38.1 million with fees, the highest sum ever paid at auction for a manuscript. It carries its own ownership record in ink: a sale note of about the year 1000 naming the men who bought and sold it, a dedication to the synagogue at Makisin in what is now north-eastern Syria, and a later clause entrusting it to a named guardian against the day the synagogue would be rebuilt. It never was.Then the trail stops for roughly five centuries. The codex reappears in Turkey in 1929, is bought for 350 pounds, passes through a British pension fund that treated art as an inflation hedge, through an unnamed dealer, and through a Geneva financier, before a ninety-four-year-old former American ambassador placed an irrevocable bid on it and gave the money to a museum in Tel Aviv. Every page of it can be downloaded free, in colour, at full resolution. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 900-c. 1000** Made by an unnamed scribe, Land of Israel or Syria `[documented]` (origin) Radiocarbon analysis of the parchment gave 880 to 960 CE. There is no colophon, so the place is argued from codicology and palaeography: Sotheby's catalogued it as Land of Israel or Syria and the workshop scholarship leans to Syria. Two anonymous Masoretes worked on the margins afterwards, the second of them partly erasing the first. - **c. 1000-13th century** Khalaf ben Abraham; then Isaac ben Ezekiel al-Attar; then his sons Ezekiel and Maimon `[documented]` (sale recorded in the manuscript) An early note in the codex records its sale from Khalaf ben Abraham, described as a businessman active in Palestine and Syria, to Isaac ben Ezekiel al-Attar, who transferred it to his two sons. Fine Books and Collections dates the note to the early eleventh century. No source consulted reproduces the original wording; every English version derives from the Sotheby's catalogue. One published account misnames the second son as Maimonides. - **13th century-14th century** The synagogue at Makisin, now Markada, Al-Hasakah governorate, Syria `[documented]` (dedication) An anonymous hand inscribed the codex 'Consecrated to the Lord God of Israel to the synagogue of Makisin'. Sotheby's suggests the book was rebound at this point for the first time. The town was later destroyed, either by the Mongols in the later thirteenth century or by the Timurids at the start of the fifteenth; the sources conflict and this record does not choose. - **14th century-late 15th century** Salama ibn Abi al-Fakhr, and his sons after him `[documented]` (conditional trust) A note on the last page, dated by Fine Books and Collections to the late fourteenth century or later, entrusts the codex to Salama ibn Abi al-Fakhr on condition that he return it to the synagogue once rebuilt, his sons to inherit on the same terms if the rebuilding did not happen in his lifetime. It never was rebuilt. This clause is the mechanism by which the book legitimately passed out of communal ownership, and most accounts omit it. - **late 15th century-1929** Not recorded `[unknown]` (gap) No owner is documented for roughly four and a half to five centuries. Sotheby's own specialist places the loss of the trail at the point where the codex was rebound, at the end of the Middle Ages or the start of the modern period, probably by non-Jewish binders, and says it reappears in Turkey after hundreds of years of silence. The commonly repeated figure of six hundred years is loose. - **1929-1978** David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942) and his descendants, London and Letchworth `[documented]` (purchase) Bought for 350 pounds. Correspondence of March and April 1929 between Aron Freimann of the Stadtbibliothek in Frankfurt am Main and Sassoon records that the manuscript had surfaced in Turkey, that Freimann could not meet the owner's asking price, and that he referred it to Sassoon, who bought it for considerably less. Catalogued as MS 1053 and published in Sassoon's Ohel Dawid in 1932. Wikipedia places the seller in what is now Ankara. - **1978-1989** British Rail Pension Fund `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Bought at Sotheby's Zurich in 1978, together with thirty-two other manuscripts from the Sassoon collection, for a reported 320,000 dollars; no source states whether that is hammer or total. The fund had decided in 1974 to place roughly 3 per cent of its holdings in works of art as an inflation hedge, buying between 1974 and 1981 with unpaid advice from Sotheby's given on condition that any sales went through Sotheby's. Exhibited at the British Museum in 1982, the only public showing before 2023. - **1989** An unnamed Jewish antiquarian book dealer `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Bought at Sotheby's London on 5 December 1989 for 2,035,000 pounds and resold privately within the year. Sotheby's specialist Shaul Seidler-Feller identifies the successful bidder as a dealer, not the eventual owner. The dealer is not named and the price he obtained on resale has never been disclosed. - **1989-2023** Jacob (Jacqui) Eli Safra, Geneva `[documented]` (private purchase) Bought from the dealer in 1989 at an undisclosed price. The figure of 3.19 million dollars attached to Safra in almost all 2023 coverage is the dollar conversion of the December 1989 auction result and is not his price. ReligionUnplugged gives 4.19 million, an outlier no other source supports. Safra commissioned the radiocarbon dating. No public loan or exhibition during his ownership was found; the manuscript was digitised for the National Library of Israel two years before he sold it. - **2023-present** American Friends of ANU - Museum of the Jewish People, Tel Aviv `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Bought at Sotheby's New York on 17 May 2023 at 33.5 million dollars hammer, 38.1 million with fees, funded by Alfred H. Moses, former United States ambassador to Romania, who had placed an irrevocable bid of 32.5 million before the sale. Sotheby's specialist describes the buyer as ANU courtesy of Moses, who donated the money required; The Art Newspaper describes Moses as acquiring it on behalf of the American Friends of ANU. He gave the money, not the object. Flown to Israel on 5 October 2023 and on permanent display at ANU since 29 May 2025. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1978** Sotheby's, Zurich, Thirty-three manuscripts from the Sassoon collection, lot Not established in the sources consulted - Estimate: Not established in the sources consulted - Hammer: Not stated in any source consulted - With premium: Not stated in any source consulted - The reported figure is about 320,000 dollars, given by the Associated Press without saying what it includes. The buyer was the British Rail Pension Fund. The month and day of the sale were not established. - **1989-12-05** Sotheby's, London, Property of the British Rail Pension Fund, lot Not established in the sources consulted - Estimate: Not established in the sources consulted - Hammer: Not stated in any source consulted - With premium: Not stated in any source consulted - The result was GBP 2,035,000, quoted in the Sotheby's note to a later Schoyen leaf and repeated since without a hammer or premium breakdown. It converts to about USD 3.19 million, and that dollar figure is what nearly every 2023 account attaches to Jacqui Safra. It is not Safra's price: the buyer at auction was an unnamed dealer, who resold to Safra privately in the same year for a sum never disclosed. - **2023-05-17** Sotheby's, New York, Codex Sassoon: The Earliest Most Complete Hebrew Bible, a single-lot sale, lot 1 - Estimate: USD 30,000,000 - 50,000,000 - Hammer: USD 33,500,000 - With premium: USD 38,100,000 - Both figures are stated in the reporting, which is unusual and useful: the gavel price was 33.5 million and the total with fees 38.1 million. Alfred H. Moses had lodged an irrevocable bid of 32.5 million before the sale, so the lot could not fail; an anonymous rival reached 33 million and Moses took it one increment higher. Four minutes between the last two bidders, under six minutes for the lot. The underbidder has not been named. No house guarantee was found in any source, which is not the same as there being none. THE TWO FIGURES CANNOT BOTH BE RIGHT. A hammer of 33.5 million against a total of 38.1 million implies an effective buyer's premium of about 4.6 million, or 13.7 per cent. Buyer's premium scales are tiered downwards, so the effective rate on a lot of this size can never fall below the house's top marginal rate, and no major house charged as little as 13.7 per cent at the top of its scale in 2023. Either the gavel figure is lower than 33.5 million or the total is higher than 38.1 million. This record prints both as reported and resolves neither; the Sotheby's price list for the sale would settle it in one line. Reported as a record for a manuscript, breaking the 30,802,500 dollars including fees paid for the Codex Leicester in November 1994. It is not the highest price for a printed text: a 1787 printing of the United States Constitution made 43.2 million dollars with fees at Sotheby's in November 2021. ## Exhibitions - Displayed during the British Rail Pension Fund's ownership, British Museum, London, 1982 - Pre-sale tour: London 22-28 February, Tel Aviv from 20 March, Dallas from 17 April, Los Angeles from 30 April, New York in early May, Sotheby's London, ANU Tel Aviv, Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, 2023 - Permanent display from 29 May 2025, opened at Deuteronomy 5, ANU - Museum of the Jewish People, Tel Aviv, The Foundations gallery, 2025 ## Literature - 1932, David Solomon Sassoon, Ohel Dawid: Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library, Oxford University Press. The publication that introduced the manuscript to scholarship as Sassoon 1053. - 1980, Israel Yeivin, Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah, Scholars Press, pp. 21-22, on the scribe's omissions and the Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali agreement rates. - 2025, Research Workshop on Codex Sassoon, Bar-Ilan University and ANU, 6-8 January 2025. Abstracts by Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, Yosef Ofer, Neria Klein, Vince Beiler, Noam Mizrahi, Nehemia Gordon and Ira Rabin, Leeor Gottlieb, Yossi Peretz and others. The single most useful body of scholarship on the object and it postdates the sale. - forthcoming, Yosef Ofer has announced a critical edition of the manuscript's masora magna. ## Open questions - Which laboratory carried out the radiocarbon dating, and what was the confidence interval? The 880 to 960 range is quoted everywhere and the analysis behind it has never been published. - How many leaves are actually missing? Sotheby's material says eight, Fine Books and Collections says twelve, and one account counts fifteen missing chapters. The scan is public and the question is answerable by anyone willing to collate it. - Who destroyed Makisin, and when? The Mongols in the later thirteenth century and the Timurids around 1400 are both in print, and the date of the second inscription fits the later option better. - Where was the codex between the late fifteenth century and 1929? Roughly five centuries have no recorded owner, and the rebinding that closed the medieval record is the only physical trace of the period. - Who was the dealer who bought it in December 1989, and what did he charge Jacqui Safra weeks later? Both are undisclosed, and the margin on that resale is the only unrecorded profit in the whole chain. - Was the 1989 result of GBP 2,035,000 a hammer figure or a total? No source states it, and the widely quoted USD 3.19 million is a conversion of an unspecified figure. - Who was the underbidder at 33 million dollars in 2023? - Was there a house guarantee on the 2023 lot in addition to the irrevocable bid? Sotheby's marks the two with different symbols and only the irrevocable bid is attested. - Which of the two 2023 figures is wrong? A USD 33,500,000 hammer and a USD 38,100,000 total imply an effective buyer's premium of 13.7 per cent, which is below any major house's top marginal rate in 2023, and a tiered scale can never produce an effective rate below its own top tier. One of the two universally quoted numbers is incorrect and no published source has noticed. - What is the quire structure? No published source gives a collation for a manuscript that has been examined by two national institutions and an auction house. ## Sources - [1] Sotheby's, lot record: 'Codex Sassoon. Circa 900, Land of Israel or Syria', sale 'Codex Sassoon: The Earliest Most Complete Hebrew Bible', New York, 17 May 2023, lot 1. Estimate USD 30,000,000 to 50,000,000. - [2] Will Fenstermaker, 'The Remarkable History of Codex Sassoon', Sotheby's, 15 February 2023. The auction house's own account of the inscriptions and the early chain; to be read as an interested party. - [3] Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 17 May 2023, on the sale. Gives the gavel price of USD 33.5 million against USD 38.1 million with fees and premiums. - [4] Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 1 June 2023, on Alfred Moses seeing the codex for the first time. The source for the irrevocable bid of USD 32.5 million and the anonymous rival's USD 33 million. - [5] The Art Newspaper, 17 May 2023, on the sale, the four-minute contest between two bidders, the visitor figures for the tour, and the classification of the 2021 United States Constitution lot as a printed document. - [6] The Times of Israel on the purchase, with Alfred Moses's statement and the description of the parchment. - [7] The Times of Israel on the arrival in Israel, the delay after 7 October 2023 and the opening of the permanent display on 29 May 2025. - [8] Research Workshop on Codex Sassoon, Bar-Ilan University and ANU, 6-8 January 2025, English abstracts. Includes Shaul Seidler-Feller of Sotheby's Books and Manuscripts Department on the modern chain, Judith Olszowy-Schlanger on the script, Yosef Ofer on the two Masoretes, Neria Klein on the use of the Aleppo Codex, Vince Beiler on the Masorah parva dendrogram, Ira Rabin and Nehemia Gordon on the inks. The most substantial scholarship on the object, and it postdates the sale. - [9] Kim Phillips, Cambridge University Library, 'Is the Earliest, Most Complete Hebrew Bible Going on Auction?', Text and Canon Institute. The published objection to the sale title and to the use of radiocarbon dating in the marketing. - [10] Associated Press, carried by Phys.org, March 2023, on the radiocarbon range of 880 to 960, the 92 per cent survival figure, the 1978 and 1989 sales, Yosef Ofer's three-manuscript framing and Kim Phillips's judgement on the scribal work. - [11] Fine Books and Collections, on the presale announcement: the early eleventh-century date for the sale note, the twelve missing leaves, the late fourteenth-century date of the Salama inscription and the tour dates. - [12] Wikipedia, 'Codex Sassoon 1053'. Tertiary; used for the three-column layout, the dimensions, the Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali agreement rates from Yeivin, the GBP 350 and GBP 2,035,000 figures and the Ankara attribution. Flagged for replacement with the Sotheby's catalogue and Yeivin at first hand. - [13] Internet Archive, 'Tanakh (Ms. Sassoon 1053), color images', uploaded 16 February 2023, 9.2 GB, Public Domain Mark 1.0, photographs by Ardon Bar-Hama, sourced from the National Library of Israel. The item metadata records that Genesis begins partway through chapter 11. - [14] Wikimedia Commons file page for the full colour scan, giving the National Library of Israel as the source, Ardon Bar-Hama as photographer and the licence as public domain. Licence verified from the API field LicenseShortName at fetch time. - [15] Medievalists.net, May 2023, reproducing the Sotheby's catalogue wording of the Makisin dedication and the count of eight missing leaves. - [16] eJewishPhilanthropy on Alfred Moses buying the codex sight unseen, with his statement about not wanting it in a bank vault. - [17] The Jewish Press, 'The History of the Codex Sassoon', for Khalaf ben Abraham's occupation and the 350 pound purchase. - [18] ReligionUnplugged, 26 February 2023. Cited here as the outlier that gives Safra's price as USD 4.19 million and as the source for the dating having been arranged by Safra. - [19] Sotheby's, lot note to a Hebrew Exodus leaf in 'The History of Script: Sixty Important Manuscript Leaves from the Schoyen Collection', 2012, citing the December 1989 result of GBP 2,035,000. - [20] Bloomberg, 17 May 2023, on the sale at USD 38.1 million and the purchase by the American Friends of ANU with a donation from Alfred H. Moses. - [21] Smithsonian Magazine on the presale announcement, including the alternative late ninth-century dating and the twentieth-century binding. - [22] National Library of Israel, Ktiv portal for Hebrew manuscripts, the origin of the colour digitisation. A stable item permalink for this codex was not retrieved; the record URL returned HTTP 403. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.