Oldest Copy of Ten Commandments Displayed Publicly for the Very FIRST Time in Israel

News Staff : May 6, 2015
United With Israel/AP

The manuscript is so brittle that it will remain on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem for only two weeks before being returned to a secure, pitch-black, climate-controlled storage facility.

(Israel)—After displaying the world's smallest Bible, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem will now reveal the oldest copy of the Ten Commandments in an exhibit tracing civilization's most pivotal moments. (Photo: AP/via United With Israel)

The 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scroll, from a collection of the world's most ancient Biblical manuscripts discovered in the Qumran region, was never before publicly displayed in Israel and has only been shown in brief exhibits abroad, said Pnina Shor of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

The manuscript is so brittle that it will remain on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem for only two weeks before being returned to a secure, pitch-black, climate-controlled storage facility.

It is one of 14 ancient objects displayed in "A Brief History of Humankind," an exhibit of historical objects spanning hundreds of thousands of years based on Yuval Noah Harari's best-selling 2011 book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

The museum is mounting the exhibit to mark its 50th anniversary.

An original handwritten manuscript of Albert Einstein's groundbreaking theory of relativity caps the exhibit.