I decided to see if I could find an example of the first time an artist made the choice to use ten Hebrew letters on representatinos of the Luchot (the tablets of the Law). At first, it seemed that the earliest examples didn't appear until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Then, I saw an engraving in a Hebrew-German bible published in 1839.
The image is clearly based after a painting by Philippe de Champaigne.
When it was painted in 1648, de Champaigne’s portrait of Moses was unique because it did not depict a scene in the biblical story. Most other artists had chosen something a bit more dramatic: Moses receiving the Luchot directly from the hands of God on a fiery smoking mountain, or Moses angrily hurling the tablets after seeing his people worshiping the golden calf. But de Champaign represented Moses as a 17th century upper class school teacher, with his pointer ready to take the viewer through the statements one by one.
This painting was well received. So much so that the artist painted it more than once, with Roman numerals on the left-hand Luchot and Arabic numerals on the right, and it now hangs in three different museums. It was also popular as an opening illustration for bibles. But in the days before photography, it had to be copied by engravers. Many engravers were not above making a few modifications to de Champaigne's work.
The image that started my quest was one in a bible given by a father to his son, whom he thought might have been straying somewhat from the traditional teachings. The father was Jakob Freud, and his son was Sigmund .