How ancient? It's one of the first ever printed on movable type. How ancient? It was a new book when Christopher Columbus discovered the New World. How ancient? The book was already a century old when Shakespeare started dabbling in playwriting.
From a piece in the Deseret News...
Since the book surfaced during a fundraising event for the Sandy Museum, its owner has bowed out of the media limelight and has put his treasure under wraps.
Sanders was attending the event as a volunteer, appraising books for museum visitors. A man pulled a book out of a garbage bag, telling Sanders he had something that was very, very old. According to Sanders, the man said, "Well this here, I got this, it's the Nuremberg Chronicles."
Sanders exclaimed, "What?" in astonishment because he knew of the book's lofty historical reputation. "And sure enough," Sanders said, "lo and behold, it was!"
Assuming the edition found in Utah is authentic, it was actually printed in 1493, in the same century that Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press. The Nuremberg Chronicle was already 100 years old when Shakespeare put on his first stage play.
"Well it's very important," Sanders said. "It's considered to be one of the world's first illustrated books printed with movable type."
The book was that era's equivalent of a history and travel book. But for its day, it was exceptionally lavish in its illustrations. "It has some 1800 woodcut illustrations in it," Sanders said. "Every page has an illustration, which is highly unusual for a book of that antiquity."
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