The Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus, late 5th-7th century to AD 979 (ink on vellum)

Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus, in Christian-Palestinian Aramaic and Georgian, manuscript on vellum [Mt Sinai, Egypt, the underlying text late 5th-7th century, the overlying text 979] One of the most important fragments to have come to auction of Christian Palestinian Aramaic, a Western Aramaic dialect used by the Melkite Christian community in Palestine and Transjordan between the 5th and 13th centuries and preserved only in a few inscriptions, palimpsests and manuscripts. The manuscript contains the earliest textual witnesses of the Gospels in the nearest dialect of Aramaic to that spoken by Jesus, composed within a living tradition based in the Holy Land. The palimpsest is overwritten with Georgian text written by the famed calligrapher, author, translator and bookbinder-monk John Zosimos, and survives here in his 10th-century binding from St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, the earliest known signed, dated and localisable binding.