After a battle that lasted several minutes at the company's headquarters, the 52-kilogram object, which according to Sotheby's dates back to between the years 300 and 800 during the Byzantine Roman period, was sold for around 5 million dollars, including costs.

Sotheby's estimated its value at between one and two million dollars. Discovered in 1913 during excavations for the construction of a railway in what is now Israel, the tombstone bears the inscription, in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, of verses from nine of the ten commandments that appear in the Bible and the Torah.

"The person who dug it up didn't realize its importance and took it home to use as a floor. It remained there for about thirty years, until an archaeologist based in Israel, Jacob Kaplan, recognized its importance and bought it," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The stone then passed through the Torah Museum in Brooklyn and was bought by a private collector, its last owner before the sale.

In its statement announcing the result of the sale, Sotheby's pointed out that the historical object has been studied by leading experts and cited in numerous academic articles and books, the most recent of which was published earlier this year.