One of the oldest books in the world sold for more than 3 million pounds VIDEO

The oldest book in the world belonging to a private collection and one of the earliest existing books, was sold at an auction in London for more than 3 million pounds, dariknews.bg reported.

The "Crosby-Shoeen" codex was owned by the Norwegian businessman and rare book collector Martin Schoen and contains the earliest complete copies of two texts from the Bible - the book of Jonah and Peter's first message, AFP reported.

Bidding for the text at Christie's auction house opened at£1.7m sterling to a mix of enthusiastic online and in-person bidders.

The text was sold for £3,065,000 including tax to an anonymous telephone bidder.

The codex was discovered by Egyptian farmers in the 1950s.

It was originally transcribed by a monk in modern-day Egypt around the 4th century AD, making it at least 1,600 years old and far older than more famous ancient texts such as the Gutenberg Bible, which dates back to the 1450s.

Written in Coptic on double-sided papyrus sheets that are now preserved between Plexiglas plates, the ancient biblical text represents an advance in writing technology at a time when single-sided scrolls were more common.

Along with the literary jewel, twelve more selected exhibits from the "Shoyen" collection were offered at the auction.

The entire collection consists of over 20,000 exhibits that span 5,000 years of history from 3,500 BC to the present day, according to the collection's website.
While impressive, the sale is far from the highest sale price 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, a new record.

That surpassed the $30.8 million that Microsoft founder Bill Gates paid in 1994 for Leonardo da Vinci's Leicester Codex manuscript.

The most expensive historical document remains one of the first prints of the US Constitution, which Sotheby's sold for $43 million in November 2021.