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One of the earliest tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments is scheduled to go up 

 on Wednesday. The auctioneer says it's a rare example of a complete tablet dating to C.E. 300-800.

The marble slab weighs 115 pounds, is approximately two feet tall, and is carved with Paleo-Hebrew script.

It was unearthed in 1913 during railroad excavations in the Ottoman Empire (in present-day Israel), but its significance was unrecognized for decades. It was even used as part of the entrance to a local home. The tablet's text is worn where people walked across it, a Sotheby's specialist 

This tablet has only nine of the ten commandments mentioned in the Book of Exodus — it's missing, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain." The tablet also instructs adherents to worship on 

, a holy site for Samaritans, near the modern-day city of Nablus.

"This remarkable tablet is not only a vastly important historic artifact, but a tangible link to the beliefs that helped shape Western civilization, said Richard Austin, Sotheby's Global Head of Books & Manuscripts.

Sotheby's has set the opening bid for the tablet at $1 million USD.

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One of the earliest tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments (dating to A.D. 300-800) is scheduled to go up for auction at Sotheby's on Wednesday.

Sotheby's to auction off ancient Ten Commandments tablet

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