The first book printed in what later became the United States of America is expected to set a world record at auction this week, the BBC reports.
If it falls withing the expected price range, it will be the most expensive book ever sold in public.
The BBC says the Bay Psalm Book is valued not only as an object of extreme rarity, but also as a symbol of a future nation's identity.
A few years after the Puritan "Great Migration" of 1630 from England to Massachusetts Bay, the settlers undertook an ambitious project, writing and printing their own book of psalms. They already had psalm books, but being reformists who embraced congregational singing, wanted a translation from the Book of Psalms in Hebrew Scriptures that was both closer to the original and written in verse. A printing press - perhaps obtained surreptitiously to avoid English licensing laws - arrived from London in 1638, along with 240 reams of paper.