“Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”
Casey Kasem
Watch your step is an age-old admonition that annually bodes wise as an idiom for the New Year. It’s not necessarily a warning. Rather, consider it just good advice regarding being mindful of one’s surroundings and keeping a sharp eye out for things.
Back in 1943, in a village in southern Israel, an individual took the expression literally while walking on a stone path leading to a home. Many of the marble paving stones used for the pathway had been unearthed 30 years prior during the excavation for a railroad line along the Israeli coast. No one paid much attention as they were laid out....
Eventually, someone noticed antiquated words etched onto one of the stones. The words turned out to be in Paleo-Hebrew script. The tablet was presented to a scholar who finally realized what he was looking at. The 155-pound etched slab was dated to between the years 300 and 800 A.D. Most amazingly, the inscribed words on it were the 10 Commandments from biblical book of Exodus. Those “laws” are extant in both the Jewish and Christian faiths.
Where, when and who inscribed the commandments on the rock is unknown. Whether a clue or not, one curiosity is that the third commandment is missing. That’s the one that instructs “Thou shall not to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
I’m just guessing but, perhaps, as impossible as that edict seems today, maybe it was equally difficult 1,700 years ago. Ergo, someone just gave up on it and left that one off. We’ll never know.
What is known is that this tablet version of the commandments is the oldest ever found. That would put it at the top of the holiday gift list for any historian, archeologist, biblical scholar or collector. (The 10 Commandments were earlier found in the Dead Sea parchment scrolls dating to 300 B.C.)
As of last week, what else is known is the tablet’s earthly worth. In 1995, was sold to a collector by an Israeli antiquities dealer. Then, it brought $850,000. Last week, the tablet went up for sale again at Sotheby’s in New York. It was expected to bring over one million dollars. It did. After 10 minutes of spirited bidding from hopeful international buyers, the tablet was sold for five million. The winning bidder has said he will donate the tablet to a museum in Israel.
Though many such finds may seem improbable, they do happen. It underscores why watching your step can not only be good cautionary advice, but very profitable.
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While the observant and lucky finder of the 10 Commandments tablet found something biblically and collect-ably akin to “Heaven on Earth,” more often people look skyward for inspiration. The Russians may have been the first nation to launch something into space (Sputnik in 1957), but the United States quickly surpassed them in what became known as “The Space Race.”
At its height in the 1960s and ‘70s, astronomic collectibles galore flew off the shelves of stores. Kids wore plastic space helmets and built model rockets. Gus Grissom, Alan Shepherd, John Glenn and dozens more were akin to rock stars. Some enjoyed New York ticker tape parades.
The Postal Service lost no time in issuing various stamps showing space capsules and astronauts walking in space. Collectors ate them up. Some of the stamps commanded a nice premium. Many still do. For kids, they offer the chance to dream about what it might be like in the cosmos.
In the coming year, the USPS has again planned several interplanetary stamps that are – okay, I’ll say it – out-of-this-world. Sorry.
The first USPS offering explores deep space showing a spiral galaxy some 32 million light-years from Earth. Taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the image is said to help researchers understand the origins of our universe.
The second stamp also features a photo taken by the Webb Telescope. It shows a star cluster a mere 1,000 light-years from Earth. For the record, one light year is calculated to be six trillion miles. Good luck fathoming that. A star cluster is actually a grouping of celestial objects too small to be stars but larger than most planets.
The new stamps will cover Priority Mail rates when those are determined. For kids, collectors or astro-dreamers, the new galactic stamps offer a colorful chance to reach for the stars.
For more collecting information and advice, log on to: http://prexford.com/.