Most rare Holy Scripture are noteworthy for their illustrations or prose . But there ’s something different hiding between the covers of a pagination presently for cut-rate sale for $ 11,000 onAbeBooks : The script acts as a miniature apothecary cabinet with spaces for lay in jars of poison .
The confidential warehousing box masquerading as a manuscript was likely gather sometime in the 19th century , Atlas Obscurareports . It uses the leather bandage of Sebastião Barradas ’s Opera omnia , vol . III — a theology school text from the mid-17th 100 — as its shell . Two hundred class or so after the original book was issue , someone pasted together the pages and hollowed them out to make way for a discreet apothecary science lab . A ledge hold four glass bottle measure out 10 centimeters high . Tiny pants are tag with the names of poisonous plants — such as hemlock , foxglove , and Devil ’s gin — in German , suggesting the al-Qur’an safe was craft in Germany . On the interior of the front binding , a memento mori illustration limn two frame above the Latin Bible quote " Statutum est hominibus semel mori , " which mean , " All men are destined to die once . "
The Vienna - based old geezer bookseller INLIBRIS is sell the oddity through Abebooks . The vender do n’t know the full backstory of the object , but they suspect it ’s not as sullen as the skulls and poison recording label propose . Rather than being an bona fide lab used by a poisoner , the Koran was in all likelihood made as a gag item .
The book may have been destine as a fraudulence , but that does n’t mean it ca n’t be used as hidden storage today — ideally for something other than poisonous substance . Curio collector can purchase the item for$10,924.51 .
[ h / tAtlas Obscura ]
