Just in time for Purim, one of the world’s oldest known Esther scrolls has been gifted to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, home to the world’s largest collection of textual Judaica.

Scholars have determined that the newly received Esther scroll was written by a scribe on the Iberian Peninsula around 1465, prior to the Spanish and Portuguese Expulsions at the end of the 15th century.

The megillah is written in brown ink on leather, in an elegant Sephardic script, which resembles that of a Torah scroll. The first panel, before the text of the Book of Esther, includes the traditional blessings recited before and after the reading of the megillah, and attests to the ritual use of this scroll in a pre-Expulsion Iberian Jewish community.