Two large leaves from a three-column Hebrew Bible, manuscripts on parchment [probably Europe, eleventh or early twelfth century]

Two large leaves from a three-column Hebrew Bible, manuscripts on parchment [probably Europe, eleventh or early twelfth century]

2 separate leaves, each with 3 columns of 30 lines in notably angular square script (cf. that in an Aragonese Hebrew Bible of same age, once Valmadonna, MS. 2, offered Sothebys, New York, 22 December 2015, lot 5), nikkud added in darker ink by a second hand, masoreh magna at foot of page, one large original flaw in parchment with signs of contemporary repair, recovered from a binding with losses to areas in middle of both leaves and significant worm damage, overall fair and legible condition, 360 by 270mm.

These are relics of a large and handsome Hebrew Bible codex, here with Jeremiah 40:12-42:1 and 51:59-52. They were certainly in Europe at the close of the Middle Ages and were reused as binding material there, and if Spanish then they were most probably once part of a grand Hebrew Bible left behind by a community forced into exile in 1492. Remarkably, they are most probably approaching their thousandth year of existence, and copied some decades before Maimondes began his own work on the text, at the time when the Norman Conquest was either about to occur or was a recent memory in England, and a few years before the launching of the First Crusade. Hebrew Bible leaves of this great antiquity are uncommon on the market.