THE JAMES OSSUARY (YA‘AKOV OSSUARY): BULLET POINT SYNOPSIS ABOUT A PROBABLE MODERN FORGERY

22 March 2015

By Dr. Christopher Rollston, George Washington University (Washington, DC)

INTRODUCTION:

Myth Number One: Forgeries are Rare. Actually, forged inscriptions are quite common. In fact, people have been forging inscriptions for a very long time. True, recent decades have witnessed many modern epigraphic forgeries, coming on the heels of many notable forgeries during the late 19th century and early 20th century (Rollston 2003; Rollston 2004; Vaughn and Rollston 2005; Rollston 2005). But epigraphic forgeries are attested not just during the modern period, but also during the Middle Ages, and even earlier, with some of the earliest forgeries hailing from ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt (Rollston 2014), and with ancient Christians producing scores of modern forgeries as well (Ehrman 2012). During the past 140 years, most forged inscriptions were sold on the antiquities market.

Myth Number Two: Forged Inscriptions are Easy to Detect. Some forgeries are of low quality and easy, therefore, to detect, but some are so good that they have fooled some of the best scholars in the world (for discussion, see Rollston 2003; Rollston 2014).

Myth Number Three: There was just one Jesus. Actually, this was a fairly common name in the Second Temple Period (i.e., the time when Jesus of Nazareth lived). In fact, within the New Testament, there are at least five people with the name Yeshua (Jesus): namely, Yeshua (Joshua) the successor of Moses (e.g., Acts 7:45); Jesus son of Eliezer (Luke 3:29), Jesus Barabbas (Col 4:11), a resident of Cyprus named Bar-Jesus (i.e., son of Jesus, Acts 13:6) and Jesus of Nazareth. Second Temple Jewish literature contains references to many additional people with this name. Significantly, therefore, even if the entire “James Ossuary Inscription” were ancient, there would be no guarantee that it belonged to the brother of Jesus of Nazareth. For that to be the case, there would need to be a more specific descriptor, something such as “the brother of Jesus of Nazareth,” or “the brother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.” Since we do not have that sort of data for this inscription caution is required.

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GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE JAMES OSSUARY

The James Ossuary was not found on a scientific expedition. Rather, it was pillaged from the ground and sold on the antiquities market. Thus, there is no reliable chain of custody for this ossuary. There are no photos of its discovery. There is no means of ascertaining the number of bones that were placed in this ossuary. Moreover, it should be remembered that the bones of multiple people were placed in a single ossuary at times (regardless of whether there was no name inscribed on the ossuary, or just one name, or two names, etc., etc.), and so even if some bone fragments were still in this ossuary, it would have been impossible to determine whose they were. Of course, because the James Ossuary was not found on a scientific expedition, and because the chain of custody cannot be determined with any certainty (because it has been in the hands of antiquities dealers and antiquities collectors), and because antiquities dealers sometimes place some bones in one ossuary that came from a different ossuary, to attempt to discern anything from any bone fragments in the James Ossuary would be fruitless. After all, without a clear chain of custody, forensic medicine is not at all decisive.

THE SCRIPT OF THE JAMES OSSUARY

The script of the first half of this inscription /Y‘qwb br Ywsp/ reflects distinct depth and clarity. In addition, kerning (quite common in this period) is present. However, the second half of the inscription /’hwy d yshw‘/ is not carved with the same depth, clarity, and kerning. Because of camera angle and lighting (as well as shadowing), some photographs capture this rather well. Personal collation confirms that there is indeed a distinct difference in depth, clarity, and kerning between the first and second halves the inscription. Compare also the predominant consistency of the depth, clarity, and kerning of some of the longer ossuary inscriptions (e.g., Rahmani 70 Lid, Plate 11 [deep with kerning, slight reduction in size because of space constraints]; Rahmani 80 Lid, Plate 13; Rahmani 370 Lid, Plate 52 [light incising throughout]; Rahmani 430 Rim, Plate 62 [deep incising and kerning throughout]; Rahmani 560 Lid, Plate 80 [consistent depth and clarity]; Rahmani 796 Front, Plate 116 [light incising throughout]. Cf. Rahmani 12 Lid, Plate 2 [with “signature” not as deep, etc.]; Rahmani 893 Front, Plate 135 [reduction of depth and size, arguably an issue of centering].

Most Tenable Conclusion: Two Hands, with the words “James son of Joseph” written by one person and “Brother of Jesus” (i.e., brother of Yeshua) written by another person. However, based just on the script, it is tenable to suggest that (a) the hands are both ancient; or (b) the second hand is modern; (c) the entire inscription is modern and the forger was not assiduousness enough in forging. Within the fields of biblical studies, hermeneutics of suspicion have been invaluable. In my opinion, it is prudent to retain such hermeneutics with this market inscription as well, as it is the “brother of Yeshua” component (written in a different hand) that arguably makes this ossuary financially valuable. I should note that I have heard it suggested that “there is no logical reason for someone to add ‘brother of Yeshua’ to this inscription.” However, I can think of a million (financial) reasons for a forger to have done so. Of course, someone might retort that this assumes the modern forger would have *known* that this would make it valuable. I would think a forger would certainly know this. Someone might further retort that Golan did not know this reading until he was told and so would not have added it. I would suggest that any forger worth his salt would *want* epigraphers to *believe* that he did *not* know how significant this addition might be. It is a very savvy technique.

LAB REPORTS.

The Geological Survey of Israel performed SEM-EDS analyses on the patina of the “Ya‘akov Ossuary” (Rosenfeld and Ilani 2002). The results showed that the patina is composed mainly of CaC03 (93%) and contains Si – 5.0%; A1 – 0.7%; Fe – 0.3%; P – 0.4%; and Mg – 0.2%. The report notes that there are no modern elements (such as modern pigments), and the patina adheres firmly to the stone. Again, this is valuable information, but it is imperative that one not conclude or assume, on the basis of this evidence, that this entire inscription is ancient. Rather, this test simply demonstrates that this object need not be disqualified on the basis of anomalies in the chemical composition of the patina. It certainly does not authenticate the patina. Indeed, the report implicitly concedes this point with the words: “no evidence that might detract from the authenticity of the patina and the inscription was found.” This is an important and honest assessment; however, it must be noted in the strongest possible terms that the absence of certain anomalies in the chemical composition of a patina is not the same as a demonstration of the antiquity of a patina. Note, however, that subsequent laboratory tests were performed and problems with the distribution of the patina were noted (Ayalon, Bar-Matthews, Goren 2004).

CONCLUSIONS:

Forgers continue to produce some very sophisticated forgeries. These are sold on the antiquities market. High quality forgeries can and do sell for tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars. The James Ossuary was not found on a scientific expedition, but rather appeared mysteriously and was sold on the antiquities market. The chain of custody for this ossuary and its inscription cannot be known. The second half of the inscription on this ossuary (i.e., the part that says “brother of Jesus”) is the part that would potentially make this ossuary worth some money. Dramatic claims required decisive evidence. In the case of the James Ossuary, we simply do not have that caliber of evidence. Indeed, I consider (at least) the second half of the James Ossuary Inscription to be a probable modern forgery, not an inscription that can be said to be an ancient inscription connected with the brother of Jesus of Nazareth. I wish that this inscription could be said to be entirely ancient and I wish that it could be said that it is certainly to be connected with the brother of Jesus of Nazareth. But the evidence supporting this conclusion is simply too tenuous, alas.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ayalon, A., Bar-Matthews, M., Goren, Y. “James Ossuary. Journal of Archaeological Science 31 (2004): 1185-1189).

Ehrman, B. Forgery and Counter-Forgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. Oxford University Press, 2012

Rollston, C. “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs I: Pillaged Antiquities, Northwest Semitic Forgeries, and Protocols for Laboratory Tests.” Maarav 10 (2003): 135-193.

Rollston, C. “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs II: The Status of Non-Provenanced Epigraphs within the Broader Corpus of Northwest Semitic.” Maarav 11 (2004): 57-79.

Rollston, C. “Navigating the Epigraphic Storm: A Palaeographer Reflects on Inscriptions from the Market.” Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 69-72.

Rollston, C. “Forging History: From Antiquity to the Modern Period.” Pp. 176-197 in Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics, eds. Matthew Rutz and Morag Kersel. Joukowsky Institute Publication Series of Brown University, Oxbow Books, 2014.

Rosenfeld, A. Ilani, S. “SEM-EDS Analyses of Patina Samples,” BARev 28 (Nov/Dec 2002).

Vaughn, A. and Rollston, C. “The Antiquities Market, Sensationalized Textual Data, and Modern Forgeries.” Written with Andrew Vaughn. Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 61-69.

Chapters in the History of Modern Forgery: Professors Leopold Messerschmidt and Charles Torrey on a Hebrew Inscription

2 November 2013

This post is a draft of a selection from my (forthcoming) volume entitled, Forging History in the Biblical World: Textual Forgeries from the Ancient and Modern Middle East, Medieval Europe and the New World

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Professor Leopold Messerschmidt authored an article for Berlin’s Orientalistische Litteratur-Zeitung, a particularly prestigious German journal. The year was 1903. The article was about an inscribed piece of clay, about two inches in diameter, and round. The script of the inscription was written in ancient Hebrew, but poorly formed. Messerschmidt, however, could read it. He was a distinguished Semitist, well-known for his work in Assyriology, and with important contributions to the field of Hittite as well. The inscription was owned by Paul Mauersberger. He had purchased the inscription near a Jerusalem train, reportedly for a mere trifle. Quite understandably, he had brought the inscription to Leopold Messerschmidt because he wished for someone to read it.

The preceding decades had witnessed the production of hundreds of forged inscriptions, most from the antiquities market, but scores had actually been salted in archaeological tells. Shapira’s “Moabite Forgeries” were among the most notorious, but there were countless additional forgeries during the final decades of the 19th century. Therefore, caution was the modus operandi for most scholars, especially for those working on inscriptions in the languages such as Hebrew, Phoenician, and Aramaic, as well as for those working in Greek and Latin. Vigilance was mandatory. Messerschmidt had some concerns about the authenticity of this inscription, but he reasoned that it might just be ancient. He entitled his article “Fälschung?” (Messerschmidt 1903).

Because Messerschmidt was not a Hebraist, he contacted one of the most esteemed and prolific scholars of Northwest Semitic at the time, Mark Lidzbarski (1868-1928). Although still quite a young scholar, Lidzbarski had published the most authoritative collection of Northwest Semitic inscriptions, Handbuch der Nordsemitischen Epigraphik (1898), completed during his time in Kiel and still a useful compendium today. Lidzbarski had been born into an Hasidic Jewish family. His given name was Abraham Mordechai Lidzbarski, but he had converted to Christianity and so changed his given name. Lidzbarski’s verdict on Messerschmidt’s inscription was quite decisive: “Das Plättchen is nach meiner Ansicht sicher eine Fälschung,” a forgery modeled on the coinage of Hasmonean King John Hyrcannus (r. 134-104 BCE).

Although the inscription was brief, just five or six words on four short lines, Lidzbarski noted both palaeographic and orthographic problems. In fact, on this inscription the name “Yohanan” and “Jews” were both misspelled. Letters were grossly malformed. But Messerschmidt was not convinced that it was a forgery. After all, he wondered “why, if it were a forgery, would someone ever attempt to forge a coin out of clay?” And he also noted that this inscription was bought for a trifle. And in addition, its previous owner, the poor workman from whom Mauersberger purchased it, was not actually attempting to sell it. It was Mauersberger who initiated the sale. Do not these things, Messerschmidt asked, “gegen eine Fälschung zu sprechen?” That is, “Do these things not speak against it being a forgery” (Messerschmidt 1903, 241).

But even F.E. Peiser, the editor of the journal Orientalistische Litteratur-Zeitung in which Messerschmidt’s article appeared, appended a footnote at the bottom of the page on which Messerschmidt’s article concludes. Peiser succinctly and decisively states that “This clay disk is a part of a forger’s apparatus” basically, a modern mold which had been formed to produce forged metal coins. Messerschmidt, however, was not at all certain that Lidzbarski and Peiser were correct. Presumably his concern was that he did not wish to declare prematurely an important ancient inscription to be a modern forgery. In certain ways, some might reasonably suggest that his caution is commendable.

Charles C. Torrey of Yale University, however, was astounded that Messerschmidt might even attempt to consider this inscription ancient. Writing in the lofty Journal of the American Oriental Society, Torrey entitled his article “On a Palestinian ‘Forgery’” (Torrey 1903). He began his article with these words: “It is a disk of baked clay, about two inches in diameter, reproducing very clumsily and on a much enlarged scale a well-known coin of John Hyrcannus. Nothing more be said, of course, as to the value of this ‘antique’; it does not even deserve to be taken so seriously as would be implied in giving it the name ‘forgery.’”

Torrey then continues, however, writing that “The fact is, this is one of a class of objects not infrequently hawked about the streets of Jerusalem by certain vagabonds of a familiar type—half beggar, half rascal. The things are made by pressing clay into forms which some idler has amused himself by fashioning. The conditions which produce such works of art as this are a little spare time, a sense of humor, and the remote possibility of gulling some brother rascal, or perhaps even a tourist. It would take perhaps an hour to whittle out of wood such a form as the one from which this ‘coin’ was made. I have frequently been offered just such discs in Jerusalem, the would-be vender always accompanying his offer with a broad grin. One of these objects now in my possession (a clay disc, about two inches in diameter, pressed from a form) bears a representation of Eve and a serpent, with a few meaningless letters appended. Apparently there was never a thought of getting more than a few paras each for these ‘inscriptions.’ It is not surprising, then, that the native workman mentioned in this case did not show any great eagerness to turn his property into money.” Then Torrey concludes his article with this sentence, “As for this worthless Palestinian trinket, it is certainly a misuse of language to call it a ‘forgery’” (Torrey 1903, 209-210).

It would be permissible to suggest that Torrey’s retort is harsh. Indeed it is. But I suppose that it would also be permissible to suggest that Messerschmidt should have listened to Lidzbarski’s reasoned and detailed demonstration (all provided in a letter from Lidzbarski to Messerschmidt) that this inscription is a forgery of particularly modest quality. Messerschmidt, however, persisted. Often in the long history of forgery, Messerschmidt would have found good company.

Christopher A. Rollston
National Endowment for the Humanities Research Scholar
Albright Institute of Archaeological Research
Jerusalem

The Israeli Forgery Trial: The Verdict is Given

14 March 2012

Epigraphic forgeries have been produced for more than two millennia, and they continue to be produced. Among the most famous from the Middle Ages is the The Donation of Constantine, a document that was hailed as ancient and important…until Lorenza Valla demonstrated (1407-1457 CE) the damning philological and historical evidence against its authenticity. Similarly, an inscription referred to as the “Brazilian Phoenician Inscription” was forged during the late 1800s and purported to be an account of Sidonians landing in Brazil. M. Lidzbarski declared it to be a forgery (in 1898), but Cyrus Gordon revived this inscriptional debate and argued (in 1968) that it was indeed an ancient Phoenician inscription. Galvanized by Gordon’s declarations, Frank Cross demonstrated (in 1968) very nicely that this inscription was forged in the modern period.

Similarly, in 1971 G. Mendenhall argued that some inscriptions from the antiquities market, inscriptions dubbed “The Hebron Philistine Documents” were ancient, and he subsequently stated that progress was being made in decipherment of these ancient documents. Frank Cross, however, stated in an annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature that year that these documents were modern forgeries. But Mendenhall chided Cross (without naming him in print) and stated that those who said these documents were modern forgeries simply “do not want to be confused with new facts” and “have already made up their minds about what the ancient world was supposed to produce.” Mendenhall went on to state that “the only scholars who are convinced of their authenticity are those who have worked seriously with the original documents, including the extremely productive computer analysis.” He also said (in 1970 and 1971) that “it is very difficult to believe that scholars capable of putting such an enormous range of information into these documents would also be capable of such irresponsible misuse of learning.” Because these sorts of statements persisted, Joseph Naveh wrote an article entitled “Some Recently forged Inscriptions” in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1982) and demonstrated that these Hebron inscriptions were modern forgeries, and of a particuarly poor sort, as they were basically the Siloam Tunnel Inscritpion written backwards!

Mendenhall’s statement suggesting basically that “no one who has such knowledge would ever do something such as this” is oft cited by many people in different contexts (but mostly it is cited by those who wish to state that this or that modern forgery must be ancient because no person capable of producing a forgery would do so). Of course, (sadly) Mendenhall was too sanguine with regard to his assumptions about human nature and human motives. This is demonstrated most convincingly by the fact that Princeton University Professor P. R. Coleman-Norton published an article in Catholic Biblical Quarterly (in 1950) about finding a manuscript which was a Greek translation of the Latin Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, a manuscript he said he came across in the North African town of Fedhala. In his autobiography entitled Reminiscences of an Octogenarian Princeton Theological Seminary professor Bruce Metzger demonstrated that this “ancient manuscript” Coleman-Norton had said he found was non-existent, and that the entire thing was a Witz, as even the title of the editio princeps demonstrated (it was entitled “An Amusing Agraphon”). In short, very capable scholars are also capable of producing forgeries, and of this there can be no doubt. Of course, even the best forgeres make mistakes…and trained palaeographers can discern these, and this also has long been the case (although some scholars are more capable than others at this, as history also demonstrates).

Naturally, with regard to some of the inscriptions that were part of this trial, it is important to remember that Joseph Naveh argued in print (in an article in Israel Exploration Journal) that the “Two Moussaieff Ostraca” were probable forgeries (in 1998). After collating most of the provenanced Old Hebrew inscriptions in the late 1990s and then looking carefully at the Moussaieff Ostraca, I began to argue (publicly, beginning in March 1999) that these two Moussaieff Ostraca were definitive modern forgeries. Of course, during the 2001 and 2002 the “Jehosash Inscription” surfaced. Joseph Naveh considered it a modern forgery (he told me this in an e-mail, in response to my e-mail to him in which I mentioned the numerous palaeographic problems I saw in this inscription which were demonstrative of its status as a modern forgery…and Naveh told me he felt the same way). Frank Cross also told me in an e-mail (in response to my e-mail to him, listing the palaeographic problems with the Jehoash Inscription) that he too believed the Jehoash Inscription to be a modern forgery and he too soon wrote an article for Israel Exploration Journal arguing that the Jehoash Inscription was indeed a modern forgery. At the same time, I was in the process of completing a long article on epigraphic forgeries for Maarav (published in 2003…and now available on Academia.edu), which included a long palaeographic discussion of the problems with the Moussaieff Ostraca and so I augmented that article with my observations about the palaeographic problems with the Jehoash Inscription. Frank Cross subsequently told me in an e-mail (which he sent in response to a penultimate draft of my long Maarav article on forgeries, an e-mail I still have) that he had become convinced that these Moussaieff Ostraca were indeed modern forgeries as well (he had previously been quoted in print as saying they were genuine). In fact, Cross went even further and stated in an open letter that he also considered the Ivory Pomegranate to be a modern forgery as well. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University became involved during this time as the primary scholar who used hard science analyses on these inscriptions (and many others), and his conclusions were that these inscriptions were indeed modern forgeries. There were dissenting voices, but not many.

Of course, the discussion in Israel soon focused on those that were believed to have forged some of these inscriptions. Based on various lines of evidence, there was a decision to attempt to prosecute those believed to be responsible for at least some of the most recent modern forgeries. For a nice summary of the objects that were part of the trial, discussion of the problems with the antiquities market, and with forgeries in general, readers might wish to consult the articles in Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005). As part of that trial, I was brought to Israel to testify a few years ago and did so…beginning one morning at around nine in the morning and finishing shortly before eleven p.m. It was a long, but productive day. I found the prosecutors, Dan Bahat and Adi Damti, to be gifted, devoted prosecutors. Moreover, Judge Aharon Farkash is a very fine judge, learned, wise. The problem is that he did not believe there was enough evidence “to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” Significantly, however, speaking about the Ya’akov Ossuary (“James Ossuary”) in particular, Judge Farkash also stated (quite reasonably) that this “is not to say that the inscription on the ossuary is true and authentic and was written two thousand years ago.” Also, Prosecutor Dan Bahat has stated that the case had been “complicated by the refusal of a key witness, who was suspected of helping to forge many of the items, to come from Egypt to testify.” Bahat also stated that “What we have tried to do here is to set an international precedent.” Further elaborating, he said, “this is the first time someone has brought the issue of antiquiteis forgery before a court.”

At the end of the day, regardless of the guilt or innocent of those individuals charged and tried for forging inscriptions in this case, the fact remains that forgeries have been produced for more than two millennia and I do not forsee this changing. Indeed, it never will…after all, the motives for forgeries are numerous, from venality, to sour grapes, to a Witz, and from antiquity to the modern period even extend to realms of motivation in the realms of the political and religious.. I have an article coming out in a Brown University Symposium volume on the history of forgeries…and I have an academic monograph on this subject that will be sent off to a publisher this coming summer….so the saga continues…

Deja Vu all over Again: The Antiquities Market, the Shapira Strips, Menahem Mansoor, and Idan Dershowitz

10 March 2021

Déjà vu all over Again:

The Antiquities Market, the Shapira Strips, Menahem Mansoor, and Idan Dershowitz

By Christopher Rollston, George Washington University

(Rollston@gwu.edu)

Introduction

Idan Dershowitz has authored an article entitled “The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments,” ZAW 133 (2021): 1-22. In his article, Dershowitz states that he offers “new evidence and arguments against the prevailing theory that Wilhelm Moses Shapira forged his infamous Deuteronomy fragments.” He considers the Shapira Strips to be authentic, basically, the first of the real Dead Sea Scrolls. That’s quite a claim.  In fact, he also believes that “The Shapira fragments are not only authentic artifacts, but are unprecedented in their significance: They preserve a pre-canonical antecedent of the Book of Deuteronomy” (p. 22 of his article). He also has a forthcoming monograph dealing with this subject, which will include a full transcription of the Shapira Strips, replete with translation and copious notes.

First and foremost, I would emphasize that Idan Dershowitz is doing the scholarly community a great service in producing a very useful transcription of the Shapira Strips, replete with copious annotations. This will be of much value for those interested in the history of modern inscriptional forgeries.

But I believe that his work will convince very few epigraphers (i.e., scholars who specialize in actual, ancient inscriptions) that the Shapira Fragments are authentic, ancient documents. And I do not believe that his work will convince all that many text scholars (i.e., scholars who primarily work not with actual ancient inscriptions, scrolls, papyri, but rather with edited texts in print editions) that the Shapira Strips are ancient…although I suspect some text scholars will find Idan Dershowitz’s proposal alluring, especially since it seems to “confirm” the things some of them have believed about the textual transmission of Deuteronomy in its earliest forms.

Nevertheless, the totality of the extant empirical evidence continues to demonstrate that the Shapira Strips are modern forgeries, and they reflect the same basic tendencies and problems which are present in most modern fakes and forgeries of the past two, three, or four centuries. I will discuss some of the evidence in this blog post, but in a more detailed fashion in a print publication.

Finally, I should also mention that I was an invited participant in the symposium at Harvard Law which was held in 2019 in which Idan Dershowitz presented his views. As I emphasized in that meeting, the evidence against authenticity is compelling: the Shapira Strips are indeed modern forgeries, modeled mostly on the book of Deuteronomy, with the sort of “forger’s flourishes, augmentations, and additions,” that are hallmark features of forgers’ methods…time and time again through the centuries.

NB: In this blog post, I reference a number of my articles.  Most of these (but not all) are available on www.academia.edu.  I have included bibliographic data for these in the “for further reading” section at the end of this blog post.  I would have liked to have integrated all of these references into this blog post, but since the New York Times article appeared today, and I wanted to get this post up rapidly, I am just including these as an addendum at the bottom of this blog post.

The Setting in the 19th centuy: 1868-1884

The Shapira Strips surfaced on the Antiquities Market in ca. 1883, and were shopped around far and wide by Moses Wilhelm Shapira (1830-1884) who had an antiquities shop in Jerusalem.  If they had been deemed ancient in 1883, they would have been by Shapira’s own statements) worth an absolute fortune. A decade prior to the surfacing of the Shapira Strips, Shapira had been closely connected with the Moabite Forgeries (ca. 1873, 1874, etc.).  The Moabite Forgeries were inscribed terra cotta and stone objects, with inscriptions modeled rather poorly on the great Mesha Stele Inscription, discovered in ca. 1868 (of which Salim al-Kari, an associate of Shapira, had made a squeeze prior to the famous shattering of the Mesha Stele by heating it and pouring water on it).  Although a number of scholars at the time deemed these Moabite Forgeries to be ancient (e.g., the great Semitist Konstantin Schlottmann), the archaeologist and epigrapher Charles Clermont-Ganneau rapidly debunked them as modern forgeries.  Clermont-Ganneau was absolutely correct.  In fact, the Moabite Forgeries would not fool even a beginning student of Northwest Semitic inscriptions today. 

It is also worth noting that many forgeries were surfacing in this era, in the wake of discoveries such as the Mesha Stele and the Temple Mount Inscription.  Clermont-Ganneau debunked many of them, authoring articles and even a monograph on the subject.  And, of course, Clermont-Ganneau was among the first to debunk the Shapira Strips as well, along with Christian David Ginsberg. Notably, Konstantin Schlottman asserted that the Shapira Strips were forgeries!

Also important to mention is that Shapira was very familiar with aged scrolls (e.g., from the Middle Ages), as he sold a number of them to the British Museum, especially from the region of Yemen.  It should also be emphasized that the Shapira Strips are no longer extant. After Shapira himself committed suicide in the Netherlands (after the Shapira Strips were declared to be modern forgeries), the Shapira Strips were later sold at auction and are often presumed to have later been burnt in a tragic house fire. At the very least, they have never surfaced again.

Further notation: During the past three or four centuries, many hundreds of forged inscriptions have appeared on the antiquities market.  These modern forgeries come in all shapes and sizes and are written in a number of languages, including Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, Latin, Syriac, and Coptic. Some of these modern forgeries were quite poor, some of them were quite good.  But the production of textual forgeries in the modern period is quite a common thing, and it has often been quite lucrative for the forgers and for those who sell forgeries.  It is a major problem in the field and has long been so.

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I. Not the first, not the last.

Idan Dershowitz is not the first scholar to attempt to contend that the Shapira Strips are ancient, and he will not be the last. That is, most famously, Menahem Mansoor (University of Wisconsin, 1959 “The Case of Shapira’s Dead Sea [Deuteronomy] Scrolls of 1883) argued at length that the Shapira Strips were not modern forgeries, but actual ancient Dead Sea Scrolls. But the convergence of epigraphic evidence is squarely against the Shapira Strips. However, I would emphasize that when one thinks about the long history of textual forgeries (going back many centuries), the Shapira Strips are quite good, especially for their time (i.e., late 1800s), but not nearly good enough to be considered ancient. That is, they are modern forgeries. I do not know if Shapira himself forged them.  But I am quite certain that they are demonstrably modern forgeries, not at all ancient.

II. A Methodological Imperative: Dramatic Claims Require Dramatic and Compelling Evidence (and we just don’t have dramatic, compelling evidence)

From the outset, I would emphasize that dramatic claims require dramatic and compelling evidence. Phrases such as: “Could it be?” “What if?” or “Might it be the case?” are simply not good enough.  Speculations about possibilities, or specious arguments about what a forger would have known, could not have known, might have done, might not have done, could have forged, could not have forged, could have written in his forgery, could not have written in his forgery…well, these have been demonstrated time and time again to be fruitless speculations, certainly not empirical evidence. And when scholars mount such arguments, time and time again they are demonstrated to have been wrong in their assumptions about all of these things that a forger could or could not have done, or could or could not have known.

Let’s now frame this in a very pragmatic fashion.  If the Shapira Fragments were to surface today, the leather would be subjected to carbon 14 tests; the ink would be subjected to chemical analyses (e.g., using a scanning electron microscope equipped with an EDS); there would be very careful analyses, using magnification, of the script itself, its morphology, the stance of the letters, and the ductus (i.e., the number of strokes forming a letter, the direction of those strokes, and the order of those strokes); the patina on the surface above the ink would be analyzed for modern contaminants in it and under it; there would be analyzes of the ways in which the ink had or had not flowed into the current cracks in the leather itself (much as was recently done with the Museum of the Bible’s Dead Sea Scrolls Forgeries). But the Shapira Fragments are lost to history. They were presumably destroyed. So there is no way to do these sorts of basic, benchmark, empirical analyses. And without these sorts of analyses today, no inscription would be declared ancient by a serious scholar trained in epigraphy.

But, in essence, Idan Dershowitz is essentially asking that we forget about all that, and consider the Shapira Strips to be ancient manuscripts, not modern forgeries.  But since the Shapira Strips have disappeared, and are presumably gone forever: (a) there can be no carbon 14 tests of the leather, (b) there can be no laboratory testing of the chemical composition of the ink (e.g., using a Scanning Electron Microscope equipped with an EDS), (c) there can be no careful palaeographic analysis of the script using magnification of the inscriptions themselves, (d) there can be no laboratory analysis of the patina which is present on the leather or on the ink, (e) and there can be no analyses of the ways in which the ink has adhered to the leather (e.g., when someone attempts to forge a manuscript today, the ink will often “leak” into ancient cracks in the leather…and that is very telling, of course).  Moreover, looking at a photo or a hand-copy of an inscription is absolutely not the same as holding an inscription in your hands. There is just no substitute for being able to look at a manuscript oneself and to collate it oneself.  Thus, for someone to attempt to declare the Shapira Strips ancient or authentic in spite of the fact that none of these analyses (such as those listed above) can be done is an absolute deal breaker.  We simply must be able to analyze the Shapira Strips themselves (i.e., the actual documents) before anyone can make a compelling declaration of antiquity.

To put it differently, if an inscription appeared on the antiquities market today, a smart, methodologically savvy, trained epigrapher (i.e., a scholar trained in the actual ancient media, ancient writing technologies, ancient media, etc.) would not declare an inscription to be ancient without first subjecting the inscription to the examinations mentioned above.  Thus, to ask us today to accept as ancient the Shapira Strips when such analyses cannot be done is a bridge too far, way too far.  And, of course, on top of all this, the evidence (mentioned already back in 1883 and 1884 is quite damning, including, but not limited to, the anomalies with the script).  The Shapira Strips are modern forgeries.

Dramatic claims require dramatic, compelling evidence, and we just don’t have it with regard to the Shapira Strips. Rather we have hypotheticals, and circumstantial evidence, at best. And that’s just not going to make the cut, alas, in light of the insurmountable problems with the script (and the eerie parallels to the Moabite Forgeries).

III. Motives: Economic in part, but also in part to Bolster the Traditional View that Deuteronomy was Ancient, not a Pious Forgery of the late 7th century BCE.

There was a strong economic motive for the production of the Shapira Forgeries.  After all the Shapira Strips were stated (by Shapira, among others) to be worth a fortune. But there was more: The Shapira Strips were intended by the forger to Bolster the Traditional View that Deuteronomy was very ancient, and not a pious forgery of the late 7th century BCE. Of course, the forger also knew that any “find” that could bolster the traditional view would garner much attention, and be worth even more, in all sorts of ways.

Many within both Judaism and Christianity have long believed that the Pentateuch (also known as the Torah, that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) was written by Moses, who lived during the 13th century BCE.

The Shapira Strips are largely taken from the book of Deuteronomy (and modeled on the script of the Mesha Stele, which hailed from the 9th century BCE). Thus, if the Shapira Strips were ancient, they would be dated much closer to the time of Moses than any manuscripts of the Pentateuch available in the 1800s (or even now).  For this reason, some people really wanted (then and now) the Shapira Strips to be ancient and authentic, since that would put them much closer to the time of Moses (again, the script of the Shapira Strips was modeled on the Mesha Stele, which did come from the 9th century BCE).    

Now, let’s put all of that in context, in the 1800s.  “Biblical Criticism” was gaining a great deal of headway during the 1800s and was embraced by many scholars and laypeople, but it was repudiated by many others as heretical.  In terms of Biblical Criticism of the 1800s, note that W.M.L. DeWette had argued in the early 1800s that the book of Deuteronomy was a pious forgery from the 7th century BCE, not from the time of Moses in the 13th century BCE.  Please allow me to emphasize that date: EARLY 1800s (decades prior to the forged Shapira Strips)….in other words, this view that Deuteronomy was a pious forgery had been circulating for several decades…and many traditionalists were still upset about it, and they longed for hard evidence to the contrary.

Similarly, the first edition of Julius Wellhausen’s book entitled “The Composition of the Hexateuch” (note: Hexateuch is a way of referring to the first six books of the Bible, namely, Genesis through Joshua) was published in 1876-1877, and in this volume Wellhausen also argued for a “late date” for the composition of Deuteronomy (among other books).  

Again, many in Christianity and Judaism had long believed that Moses (who lived during the 13th century BCE) was responsible for Deuteronomy as well as the rest of the Pentateuch.  But scholars such as DeWette, along with many other scholars in the 1800s, were dating Deuteronomy to the 7th century BCE, that is, around 500 or 600 years after Moses.  Many traditionalists (even many scholars) believed that to be absolutely heretical. 

Indeed, the traditionalists believed that the Bible itself was under assault from Biblical Criticism and its late-dating of Biblical texts. 

Now….enter the Shapira Strips!! They solved everything and vindicated the Bible….that is, The fact that the Shapira Strips seemed to demonstrate that Deuteronomy could be dated much closer to the time of Moses than scholars such as DeWette had contended was widely hailed as absolutely marvelous. And the Shapira Strips could demonstrate that Deuteronomy was much older than the late 7th century….after all, the script of the Shapira Strips was very similar to the script of the Mesha Stele, and the Mesha Stele was 9th century…more than two hundred years prior to DeWette’s dating of Deuteronomy! 

Of course, it should always be remembered that modern forgers (and ancient forgers) know their market.

And it’s also worth emphasizing again that the Shapira Strips were being touted as priceless…and for this reason the price Shapira was asking for them was indeed a fortune. 

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IV. Textual Forgeries: A very old story

(1) There is a long history of talented, unscrupulous people (including scholars, antiquities dealers, and disgruntled students) producing textual forgeries (as well as other types of forgeries, of course, as well).  Thus, we have textual forgeries from the ancient, medieval, and modern world….that is, from ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, as well as ancient Israel and Early Christianity, from the Middle Ages (e.g, the Donation of Constantine), and from the modern world (I deal with this in a print article on the long history of textual forgeries).  Thus, it’s a very old tactic. (2) During the past few centuries, modern forgeries revolving around the Bible and Biblical World have surfaced on the antiquities market. These have generated (even before, during, and after the time of Shapira) a great deal of money.  These forgeries are in various languages, including Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic.  (3) Forgers have often patinated their works so as to cause them to appear ancient.  And also, the forgers will, when possible, use older or ancient media as well (e.g., ancient pots, ancient papyri, parchment). In short, forgers have long been quite sharp, quite knowledgeable. (4) Forgers and dealers often produce forgeries that will peak the interest of scholars and collectors….that is, forgers know the market…they know their target-audience, “marks” well. They know what people want, and they produce fakes with the desired content. (5) Forgers and dealers often go to “text” scholars, rather than to epigraphers, palaeographers, and papyrologists….they do this because text scholars are accustomed to working more with edited texts than with ancient written artifacts (this was the case with the Jesus’ Wife Papyrus, and with countless other modern forgeries). (6) These text-scholars often take the bait, as it were (in my two Maarav articles, I deal with some of this….and the ways in which various scholars ultimately “authenticated” inscriptions which were actually modern forgeries).  (7) Shapira either produced himself, or commissioned the production of, the Moabite Pottery Forgeries and the Moabite Stone Forgeries. These are pretty bad forgeries…and would not fool anyone in the field today, but they fooled quite a few people in the 1870s.  I’ve written about these some (e.g., see the articles in the Finkelstein volume and the Naveh volume, in which I deal some with Shapira, especially his pottery and stone forgeries).  (8) The Shapira Strips were declared modern forgeries in the 1880s on the basis of strong and compelling evidence.  Thus, Ginsberg and Clermont-Ganneau were quite right (that is, long ago, at the time the Shapira Strips surfaced).  (9) Shapira had means, motive, opportunity. .  

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V. Basic Principle: After the discovery of a truly sensational ancient inscription, forgers will often produce modern forgeries which are similar in terms of script or content to the authentic, ancient one. The Mesha Stele (discovered in 1868, and often called the Moabite Stone) was just such an inscription…it dates to the 9th century BCE, is written in the Old Hebrew script (because, as the inscription itself mentions, that King Omri of Israel had subjugated the Moabites and held hegemony over them), it is written in the Moabite language (remember: language and script are two different things), and it contains content which dovetails with the Bible’s description of King Mesha of Moab (e.g., 2 Kings 3). The Mesha Stele is a truly sensational, ancient inscription.  

It has been clear for more than a century that he Moabite Clay forgeries were largely the product of Shapira’s friend and business associate Salim al-Kari (Salim had made a squeeze of the Mesha Stele, hence, he knew what the script looked like), while the Moabite Stone Forgeries were the product of Martin Boulos, but the fact remains Shapira himself is also definitely and deeply connected with these blazing forgeries of the early 1870s. In fact, Shapira or an associate of his would sometimes take would-be buyers to a site, state that some of these clay and stone “inscriptions” had recently been found at this or that site, and then he would invite the would-be buyers to dig around…and lo and behold they would find some in the ground.  Of course, these had been “planted” there so that they could be found, but it was a very effective tool in the toolbox of Shapira.

The Shapira Strips are also modeled on the script of the Mesha Stele.  The script of the Shapira Strips is considerably better than that of the Moabite Forgeries.  This is not surprising, as a decade had passed between the time of the production of the Moabite Forgeries and the Shapira Strips.  Scholars had been quite critical of the script of the Moabite Forgeries, and this was all documented in journal articles of that time.  The forger of the Shapira Strips was reading those articles, especially those published in ZDPV.

Of the many similar stories is this more recent one: The Tel Dan Stele Inscription was discovered on the excavation at Tel Dan in 1993 and 1994. This inscription mentions the “House of David” (i.e., the Dynasty of David), is written in Aramaic, and dates to the 9th century BCE. Less than a decade after the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele, a modern forgery (which also fooled a number of scholars) known as the Jehoash Inscription surfaced on the antiquities market (in ca. 2001).  I collated this inscription in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, a day or two before my testimony for the prosecution in the Israel Forgery trial in the 2000s.  Again, the point is that in the wake of the discovery of a bona fide sensational inscriptional find, forgers begin to produce very similar fakes…and these can, and sometimes do, sell for vast amounts of money.

There is also a very similar situation with a Greek inscription from the Temple Mount, discovered in 1871.  It is a truly fascinating inscription which contains a warning to any foreigners who might venture too far into the Temple complex in Jerusalem.  And not long after this discovery, a forged Temple Mount inscription appeared on the antiquities market. 

In short, the appearance of the Shapira Strips and the Moabite Forgeries follows an established pattern, a pattern that is attested in the periods before and after Shapira’s time.

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VI. A few words about the Script

The script of the Shapira Strips is not the same as the bastardized script of the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries sold by Shapira. Indeed, the script of the Shapira Strips is much better than the script of the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries, but the script of the Shapira Strips has a handful of eerie similarities to the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries. 

Idan wishes for us to dismiss this evidence, or to assume that those producing the hand-copies of the Shapira Strips were utterly inept.  But, with all due respect to Dershowitz, we have enough good hand-copies, and even script charts, to be able to state that the script of the Shapira Strips is flawed, and these flaws are similar to the sorts of flaws often found in modern forgeries through the decades.  This evidence cannot simply be dismissed.

  Also relevant: we can state that the script of the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries and that of the Shapira Strips is similar (in a few tell-tale ways) because we have some fairly good hand-copies of the Shapira Strips (hand-copies which were made by scholars after Shapira announced the Shapira Strips in ca. 1883), and, of course, many of the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries are still in existence today (especially in England and Israel).  In short, the script of the Shapira Strips is a better than that of the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries, but the hallmark features that demonstrate the script is forged are present in both groups (i.e., the Moabite Clay and Stone Forgeries as well as that of the Shapira Strips).

VII. Forgers often model their forgeries on ancient literary texts (e.g., the Bible, or some other ancient literary text), or on some ancient inscription.

Especially relevant for the Shapira Strips: In this connection it is useful for me to emphasize another standard method of forgers: forgers often model their forgeries on the script and words of actual ancient texts.  They do this for a number of reasons, one of which is to attract the attention of scholars and the public (as people will often say about these that “they authenticate the Bible”).  But there is another reason as well: it is hard for someone in the modern period to produce a fake which contains no errors with regard to the script, spelling, syntax, and word-meanings (when compared to actual ancient texts), but if the forgers mimic some of the words, sentences, spelling, or syntax, of a genuine inscription or an ancient literary text, it is much easier to avoid mistakes…and so forgers often mimic or copy the words from ancient texts..  Thus, many forgers borrow quite heavily from genuine ancient texts (either inscriptions or literary texts).  The forger of the Shapira Forgeries is very heavily dependent on the book of Deuteronomy.  The forger of the Shapira Strips picked and chose this text and that text (as forgers often do), but the dependence is crystal clear.  Idan Dershowitz wishes to claim that a forger could not have done that. I have learned, in part the way, that making assumptions about what a forger could or could not do, is perilous. For centuries, they have really been quite good, much smarter and better than we thought.

VIII. Modern Forgeries dismissed early on by a consensus of scholars, with some scholar or scholars coming along later and arguing that these were not forgeries after all: We’ve seen this previously too.

After the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (beginning in 1947), some people began to suggest that the (now lost) Shapira Strips might have been authentic and were, basically, the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  As already noted, among those who contended this was Menahem Mansoor of the University of Wisconsin.   

This sort of thing happens from time to time with regard to forgeries.  For example, there is a modern forgery known as the “Brazilian Phoenician Inscription.”  This surfaced during the late 1800s and was rapidly dismissed as a modern forgery, that is, it was deemed not to be ancient Phoenician, but rather a modern forgery.  However, during the 1960s, Cyrus Gordon, then of Brandeis University began to contend (in an article published in 1968) that the Brazilian Phoenician inscription was ancient.  Frank Cross of Harvard rapidly wrote a rejoinder (published also in 1968) demonstrating that the Brazilian Phoenician Inscription was a modern forgery, and not a particularly good one. In short, it’s nothing new for someone to come along and suggest that some modern forgery is actually ancient.  It happens.

In the case of this most recent attempt by Idan Dershowitz to suggest that the Shapira Strips are ancient, I would simply note that this has been attempted in the past, and without success (e.g., Menahem Mansoor).  

In Professor Dershowitz’s case, he is attempting to contend that the contents of the Shapira Strips (the things included as well as the things excluded) corresponds with just what scholars would expect for an early version of the book of Deuteronomy. I would counter that it is always precarious to argue that an inscription from the market must be considered ancient based on what we think a non-extant (!) proto-biblical text might have said! That’s putting the cart before the horse in all sorts of ways.

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I will be including a long discussion of the Shapira Strips in my forthcoming volume entitled (tentatively), Pious Forgeries: Forging History in the Ancient World of the Bible & the Modern World of Biblical Studies. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Forthcoming. I look forward to continuing this conversation, and to providing additional, detailed evidence against the Shapira Strips.

Sincerely,

Christopher Rollston (Rollston@gwu.edu)

For Further Reading:

“Non-Provenanced Epigraphs I: Pillaged Antiquities, Northwest Semitic Forgeries, and Protocols for Laboratory Tests.” Maarav 10 (2003): 135-193.

“Non-Provenanced Epigraphs II: The Status of Non-Provenanced Epigraphs within the Broader Corpus of Northwest Semitic.” Maarav 11 (2004): 57-79.

“Navigating the Epigraphic Storm: A Palaeographer Reflects on Inscriptions from the Market.”  Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 69-72.

“The Antiquities Market, Sensationalized Textual Data, and Modern Forgeries.” Co-authored with Andrew Vaughn. Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 61-69.

“The Public Display of Forgeries: A Desideratum for Museums and Collections.”  Written with Heather Dana Davis Parker. Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 75.

“Who Wrote the Torah according to the Torah?” TheTorah.com (August 2017). https://www.thetorah.com/article/who-wrote-the-torah-according-to-the-torah

“Forging History: From Antiquity to the Modern Period.” Pp. 176-197 in Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics, eds. Matthew Rutz and Morag Kersel.  Joukowsky Institute Publication Series of Brown University, Oxbow Books, 2014.

“The Ivory Pomegranate: The Anatomy of a Probable Modern Forgery.” Pp. 238-252 in Epigraphy, Philology and the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on Philological and Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett, eds. Jeremy M. Hutton and Aaron D. Rubin. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015.

“The Bullae of Baruch ben Neriah the Scribe and the Seal of Ma‘adanah Daughter of the King: Epigraphic Forgeries of the 20th Century.” Pp. *79-90 (English) in Eretz Israel 32: The Joseph Naveh Volume, eds. Joseph Aviram, Shmuel Ahituv, et al. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016.

“The Putative Authenticity of the New ‘Jerusalem’ Papyrus Inscription: Methodological Caution as a Desideratum,” Pp. 321-330 in Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein, ed. Oded Lipschits. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017.

The Forger Among Us: The Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scrolls and the Recent History of Epigraphic Forgeries

15 March 2020

The Forger Among Us:

The Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scrolls and the Recent History of Epigraphic Forgeries

Prof. Christopher Rollston (Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University)

rollston@gwu.edu

Dept. of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

George Washington University

             

On March 13, 2020, the Museum of the Bible held a symposium in Washington, D.C.  The focus of the symposium was the presentation of various laboratory tests (on the basis of physical characteristics, elemental and molecular analysis, chemical analyses; using, for example, FTIR analyses, XRF analyses, SEM-EDS analyses, etc.) performed on sixteen fragments, putatively of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are part of the Museum’s holdings.  The point-person for the laboratory tests was Colette Loll (of Georgetown University), founder and director of Art Fraud Insights, the firm responsible for the laboratory report (which is 212 pages long).  The hard-science team included (in addition to Colette Loll) Abigail Quandt (of the Walters Art Museum), Aaron Shugar (of the State University of New York), Rebecca Pollak (SAFA Senior Research Conservator), Jennifer Mass (Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture), and Thomas Kupiec (Founder of the Kupiec Group and CEO of ARL, Bio Pharma and DNA Solutions).  The respondents at the symposium (the symposium was entitled “A Journey for the Truth: Investigating the Recent Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments”) were, in order of presentations: Dr. Greg Bearman (Cal Tech), Dr. Christopher Rollston (George Washington University), Dr. Kipp Davis (Trinity Western University), Dr. Sidnie White Crawford (University of Nebraska and Princeton Theological Seminary), and Dr. Lawrence Schiffman (New York University).  Respondents were given access to the full laboratory report (i.e., all 212 pages) during the weeks prior to the symposium.   

              Dr. Jeff Kloha (Chief Curatorial Officer of the Museum of the Bible; Ph.D. University of Leeds; Kloha joined the Museum of the Bible in 2017) began the symposium with a brief welcome, and Dr. Michael Holmes (Director of the Museum of the Bible Scholars Initiative; Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary; Holmes joined the Museum in November 2014) provided a brief history of research on the “Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scroll Fragments” (including the fact that these “fragments” were said to be, in part or in whole, from the Kando family, that is, the family of Khalil Eskander Shahin, who was a broker and seller of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered during the late 1940s and early to mid-1950s).  Among the things that Kloha and Holmes indicated in their remarks was the fact that they fully accept the verdict of Art Fraud Insights: all sixteen Dead Sea Scroll fragments are actually modern forgeries, not ancient.  Based on the constellation of evidence (palaeographic, laboratory), it is (from my perspective, previously and also now) readily apparent that all sixteen of the Museum’s Dead Sea Scroll fragments are indeed modern forgeries.  This seemed to me to be the clear consensus of all of the respondents.

              The conclusions of Art Fraud Insights were preceded by prior laboratory tests (on a smaller selection of the Museum’s Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, tests which also suggested that these fragmentary materials were modern forgeries) and the assessments of various Biblical Scholars and Epigraphers (e.g., Dr. Kipp Davis, Dr. Arstein Justnes, Dr. Michael Langlois, among others).  Thirteen of these Dead Sea Scroll fragments had been published in a volume entitled Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments in the Museum Collection (eds. Emanuel Tov, Kipp Davis, and Robert Duke; Leiden: Brill, 2016, 236pp).  The morning of the symposium, a National Geographic article authored by Michael Greshko was published online (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/museum-of-the-bible-dead-sea-scrolls-forgeries/).

              It is important to put the Museum’s sixteen modern forgeries in a broader framework.  (1) First and foremost, it should be emphasized that textual forgeries have a very long history, going back to Ancient and Medieval times.  For example, the Famine Stele was an ancient Egyptian forgery (hailing from the Ptolemaic Period but purporting to come from the time of the Egyptian Old Kingdom), the Manishtushu Cruciform Monument was an ancient forgery (purporting to hail from the time of Sargon the Great’s son in the late 3rd millennium BCE, but in reality hailing from the Neo-Babylonian Period, some fifteen hundred years later), and the Donation of Constantine was a Medieval forgery (and in reality not from Constantine the Great, but a forgery from the Middle Ages which purported to be from Constantine the Great; for discussion of these, see Rollston, “Forging History: From Antiquity to the Modern Period,” 2014, pp. 177-184, and the earlier literature cited there).  (2) Textual forgeries (in Phoenician, Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, etc.) also abounded during the late 19th century and the early 20th century, with the Shapira Forgeries (some on stone, some on pottery, and some on parchment), the Brazilian Phoenician Forgeries, and “the Messerschmidt Clay Forgeries” (http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?m=201311 ).  (3) Furthermore, during the final decades of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century, epigraphic forgeries continued to abound, with the Hebron Philistine Documents, the Moussaieff Ostraca, the Jehoash Inscription (all dealt with in Rollston 2003, Rollston 2004, Rollston 2005, as well as in some later articles of Rollston), the Ma’adanah Seal, the Baruch Bullae (both dealt with in Rollston 2016), the Ivory Pomegranate (dealt with in Rollston 2015), the Ya‘akov [James] Ossuary, the Jesus Wife Papyrus, the Jerusalem Papyrus (the latter two dealt with in Rollston 2017) being some of the most famous.  (4) And the list could go on.  But the point is that these forged Dead Sea Scroll fragments are part of a much broader phenomenon.  It is also important to mention that all of these forgeries of the past 150 years are connected with the Antiquities Market in some fashion. (5) The methods of forgers are varied, but can be fairly well ascertained without much difficulty.  Forgers have a multitude of tools at their disposal (see Rollston 2003, pp. 137-139, forgers can and do use the best of our lexica and grammars, the best of our epigraphic and palaeographic discussions, the best of our historical and cultural discussions.  (6) They also read our discussions of laboratory analyses (cf. Rollston 2003, pp. 182-191, for discussion of various protocols and procedures for laboratory tests, and the failings of some laboratory scientists as well), including the chemical composition of inks and patinas (and forgers will read this superb analysis by ArtFraudInsights, alas, and they will learn much from it so as to produce better forgeries on a variety of media).  And, of course, forgers can and do use ancient media (e.g., ancient potsherds, stones of Levantine quarry, ancient papyrus, ancient vellum; for fuller discussion, see Rollston 2003, pp. 138-139; Rollston 2004).  Indeed, only the most foolish of forgers would not use some ancient medium (e.g., with the hope that a carbon test on the medium may be performed and thus “authenticate” the inscription itself).  (7) And forgers have also (since at least the time of the Shapira Forgeries) attempted to create fake patinas (see Rollston 2003, pp. 183-186).  (8) Furthermore, modern forgers are also becoming quite adept at duping even some fairly good hard-scientists by salting things such as carbonized remains into their fake patinas (as was the case with the Jehoash Inscription; see Rollston 2003, pp. 183-186 et passim), and by using ancient carbonized remains (e.g., from the remains of beams burnt in antiquity) to make inks which can pass laboratory tests (dealt with especially in Rollston 2017, pp. 322-323).

              The motives of the forgers are varied.   Here are the ones which I have contended (in various publications, including Rollston 2003, pp. 191-193; Rollston 2014, pp. 176-177) are most common during the past 150 years, but many (if not all) are also part of the ancient world in some fashion. Some have suggested (or assumed) that the primary motive for forgers is economic.  True enough, venality is certainly a motive through all time.  However, I am confident that a larger number of motivations can be posited, based on known forgeries: (1) Venality (i.e., greed); (2) Hubris (i.e., the forger’s belief that he or she is too good to make mistakes, detectable or otherwise); (3) “Sour Grapes” (e.g., of a doctoral student purged from a program, or a veteran scholar who feels he or she has been slighted by another scholar); (4) Professional Rivalry (e.g., the production of a forgery which confirms something which said scholar has previously said in print); (5) Pranks (i.e., an outright joke); (6) Professional/Personal Aggrandizement (e.g., fame for being associated with some stunning new inscription from the market); (7) Religion and Politics (especially the desire to prey on the sincere beliefs, hopes, and fears of good people).  I have discussed all these in greater detail in various places through the years (again, Rollston 2003; Rollston 2004; Rollston 2014).

As an ancillary note, and as a modus operandi of forgers: namely, forgers of, dealers of, and owners of forged antiquities often seek out scholars whom they believe will “authenticate” their finds.  Along these lines, forgers, dealers, and owners know which scholars most frequently “authenticate” inscriptions (including some forgeries) from the Antiquities Market and they especially seek out the opinions of those scholars (because they want their own inscriptions to be authenticated). 

Similarly, forgers, dealers, and owners will often approach scholars whom they know do not work with epigraphic remains, but are rather “text scholars” (i.e., scholars who mostly work with edited texts rather than the actual physical objects…and so these scholars do not intimately know the look and feel of something which is actually ancient). 

It is important to mention that although some have suggested that scholars are never the culprits, the facts on the ground demonstrate otherwise.  Note, in this connection, the famous forgery published by Princeton Professor Coleman-Norton (dealt with in Rollston 2003, pp. 192-193), a forger who was outed by his own student, Bruce Metzger.

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              The Forger of the Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scroll Forgeries: With this basic summary of some of the early history of forgeries, I should like to return, in earnest, to the forger of the Museum of the Bible’s forgeries.  I shall be fairly forthright here.  Here is a profile of the forger: I believe that the forger of these Dead Sea Scrolls forged fragments is a trained scholar in our field, with access to actual ancient scrolls.  I believe that the forger forged them during the course of a few months, or more likely, a couple years (this also accounts for some of the variation in the script).  I believe that venality (indeed, outright and blatant greed) is a primary motivation (literally, netting the forger millions of dollars for these Museum of the Bible forgeries), but greed is not the only motivation.  I believe the scholar of these forgeries is particularly hubristic, and assumed he (or she) could fool all other scholars (and also probably delighted in this assumption).  I do not think that these were forged as some sort of a joke (as was the case in the Coleman-Norton forgery and in the case of the Hebron Philistine Documents). Clearly, I believe that the forger is amoral.  Also, I believe that the forger worked primarily alone, but could have included a paid friend or associate who had at least a high-school level knowledge of chemistry (these forgeries are not sophisticated enough to have included the assistance of a trained scholar in chemistry). 

              Also, I believe that a good investigative journalist should be capable, given the resources (e.g., several months of compensated work) of a good newspaper or learned society, should be able to discover the identity of the forger.  I hope that the weight of all of the relevant national and international laws is brought forth against this forger (although, as a realist with regard to conviction rates, I suspect that the most that can be hoped is that the identity of the forger will be discovered).

              Some final reflections: The Museum of the Bible (and its precursors, associated entities, etc.) engaged in some lamentable and egregious actions, as well as lapses of professional ethics, some of which were also breaches of the law (hence the US Dept. of Justice case, of course).  This cannot, and should not, be forgotten (for all sorts of reasons).  It was bad, and it was wrong (I’m thinking here of, among other things, the purchase of many objects, including cuneiform tablets, from conflict zones in the Middle East).  And the Museum has paid a price for those actions, not only in the serious tarnishing of the reputation of the Museum and the surrender of pillaged objects and inscriptions, but also substantial financial penalties from the US Dept. of Justice.  But I have also long said, and long believed, in the possibility and importance of true penitence and the possibility of forgiveness and redemption.  Indeed, I do believe in the possibility of forgiveness and redemption, on a personal scale as well as for organizations, learned societies, and even nations. 

              So, for what it’s worth, here’s what I think in this case of these forged Dead Sea Scroll fragments now in the custody of the Museum of the Bible, and some of the broader implications.  These were purchased with the understanding that they were known prior to the enactment of the “Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property – 1970” (e.g., that they came from the Kando family and so the chain of custody was secure).  Frankly, I believe those advising the Museum at the time of the purchase were (at the very least) naïve, but that’s another story for another time.  The thing that I wish to emphasize here is that the Museum of the Bible ultimately came clean: They rapidly acknowledged that these scroll fragments might be modern forgeries and that the lore (and documents) associated with their origins might be a fabrication (indeed, I have long said that I put zero credence in any “statement about the antiquity” or “documentation” that is shown to me by an owner, collector, or dealer, as they have so many reasons to prevaricate).  Then, the Museum funded the very extensive laboratory tests (I have no idea what this must have cost, as the laboratory reports were numerous, conducted by first-tier scientists, and are reported in a tome that exceeds 200 pages….the final sum for all this work must be in the five figures, and I would not be surprised if it was in the low six figures).  And then, to top it all off, major people in the current senior leadership at the Museum (e.g., Jeff Kloha and Michael Holmes….and many others, I believe as well) have embraced the results of the laboratory report: All sixteen of these Dead Sea Scroll fragments are modern forgeries.  I would imagine that this was, and is, a tough pill to swallow.  And frankly, I’m impressed that they publically and unambiguously stated that they accept this conclusion.  Indeed, I’m impressed.  I’m not surprised, as I have come to know Jeff Kloha and Michael Holmes some during the past few years.  These are honest people, good and kind people, and smart scholars.  Frankly, I have come to like and appreciate them. 

              One final point: I have believed for a long time (and said in print long ago, after a comment to me from mentor and friend, the late Frank Moore Cross), museums should have forgery exhibits so as to raise the awareness of the public and of scholars about the problem of modern forgeries (see Rollston and Parker 2005).  The Israel Museum did this a number of years ago with regard to the Shapira Forgeries.  It was a marvelous exhibit, drew a lot of attention to the problem, did a lot of good, and my earnest hope is that the Museum of the Bible will allocate space, as a signal of its further desire to right wrongs, for an exhibit of these forged Dead Sea Scroll fragments.  And, along those same lines, since many museums have modern forgeries in their holdings (including the Smithsonian and the Met), perhaps the Museum of the Bible could work with such museums to produce a first-class exhibit about the problem of the antiquities market and the problem of modern forgeries.  That’s an exhibit I would love to see.  It’s unusual, it’s important…and, of course, the Museum does have the forgeries.

Select Bibliography

Rollston, Christopher A. “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs I: Pillaged Antiquities, Northwest Semitic Forgeries, and Protocols for Laboratory Tests.” Maarav 10 (2003): 135-193.

______.  “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs II: The Status of Non-Provenanced Epigraphs within the Broader Corpus of Northwest Semitic.” Maarav 11 (2004): 57-79.

______.  “Navigating the Epigraphic Storm: A Palaeographer Reflects on Inscriptions from the Market.”  Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 69-72.

Rollston, Christopher; Heather Dana Davis Parker.  “The Public Display of Forgeries: A Desideratum for Museums and Collections.”  Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 75.

Rollston, Christopher.  “Forging History: From Antiquity to the Modern Period.” Pp. 176-197 in Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics, eds. Matthew Rutz and Morag Kersel.  Joukowsky Institute Publication Series of Brown University, Oxbow Books, 2014.

______“The Ivory Pomegranate: The Anatomy of a Probable Modern Forgery.” Pp. 238-252 in Epigraphy, Philology and the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on Philological and Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett, eds. Jeremy M. Hutton and Aaron D. Rubin. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015.

______.  “The Bullae of Baruch ben Neriah the Scribe and the Seal of Ma‘adanah Daughter of the King: Epigraphic Forgeries of the 20th Century.” Pp. *79-90 in Eretz Israel 32: The Joseph Naveh Volume, eds. Joseph Aviram, Shmuel Ahituv, et al. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016.

______.  “The Putative Authenticity of the New ‘Jerusalem’ Papyrus Inscription: Methodological Caution as a Desideratum,” Pp. 321-330 in Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein, ed Oded Lipschits.  Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017.

The Jerusalem Papyrus: Complementary Notations

1 November 2016

The Jerusalem Papyrus: Complementary Notations

by Dr. Christopher Rollston, George Washington University
__
Introduction

Here are the readings of the editio princeps: [‘]mt. hmlk. mn‘rth. nblym. yyn. Yršlmh.
Translation of the readings of the edition princeps: [Maidse]rvant of the King, from N‘rth, (two) jars of wine to Jerusalem.

As the papyrus continues to garner attention, it is perhaps useful to convey certain additional reflections, especially with the release of the editio princeps (i.e., I have now received a copy of it and so can augment some of my reflections). I have also had some time to spend with a very fine high resolution image of the inscription.

Moreover, I should like to emphasize that I would be pleased for this papyrus inscription to be ancient, but the fact remains that forgeries have been produced in steady numbers during the past century (and much earlier), in a number of languages, including Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Phoenician (for a synopsis of much of this data, see my “Forging History: From Antiquity to the Modern Period,” in _Archaeologies of Text_, eds. Morag Kersel and Matthew Rutz [2014], available on www.academia.edu). Therefore, vigilance should be the modus operandi of the entire field, as the great Joseph Naveh of Hebrew University often reminded us (e.g., his BASOR 247 [1982] article “Some Recently Forged Inscriptions,” his JNES 27 [1968] article “Aramaic Dubiosa,” and his IEJ 48 [1998] article with Israel Eph’al on the Moussaieff Ostraca) and as the great Frank Moore Cross reminded us (with his Orientalia 37 [1968] article on the forged Phoenician Inscription from Brazil and his IEJ 53 [2003] article on the Jehoash Inscription). Of course, the recent Gospel of Jesus Wife Papyrus forgery should also be instructive for all in the field.

On a different note, it should also be emphasized that we have many Old Hebrew inscriptions from First Temple Period Jerusalem, some of them particularly famous and especially important, such as the Siloam Tunnel Inscription, the Royal Steward Inscription (with N. Avigad’s masterful decipherment), the Ophel Inscription (see the list and full texts of inscriptions from Jerusalem in the volume entitled _Hebrew Inscriptions_ edited by F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J.J.M. Roberts, C.L. Seow, and R.E. Whitaker [Yale, 2005]. Furthermore, we have Mesopotamian inscriptions, such as the famed Sennacherib Prism, with its reference to Jerusalem and its King Hezekiah (r. ca. 715-687) during the 701 BCE siege of Judah. In addition, the city of Jerusalem is mentioned in a nice Old Hebrew inscription in stone from Khirbit Beit Lei (as Adam Bean and Nathaniel Greene have emphasized) that dates to the late First Temple Period. In other words, from inscriptions we know a lot about and from Jerusalem.

______

(1) Carbon dates normally, of course, have a plus and minus range. In the media discussions of the Jerusalem Papyrus, there have been many references to an assumed secure 7th century carbon date for the papyrus….but this is too narrow…as it is without a stated plus and minus range. Important, therefore, is the fact that in the editio princeps of this inscription, a larger range is given (footnote 3, page 248), with a calibrated 2-sigma date being (756- 679 BC [34%], and 671-430 BC [61.4%]). Of course, this is indeed fairly important because it shows that the C 14 date for the papyrus is certainly not necessarily a 7th century date. That doesn’t necessarily change things all that much, but it is important, for a number of (fairly obvious, I think) reasons. Furthermore, Israel Finkelstein, Eric Cline, Benjamin Porter, and Felix Höflmayer have all drawn my attention to the fact that the “Hallstatt Plateau” is arguably to be factored in here…namely, according to the “Hallstatt Plateau,” radiocarbon dates of ca. 2450 BP (Before Present = 1950) consistently calibrate to ca. 800-400 BC, regardless of the measurement precision. The editio princeps of the Jerusalem Papyrus gives 2460 BP +/- 71. In short, the plateau is operative. Thus, it is quite problematic to suggest that the carbon date for the Jerusalem Papyrus is, and can only be, 7th century BCE. The plus or minus must be admitted to be considerably wider for the carbon date, arguably a couple hundred years.

(2a). The Restoration. A striking thing is that the authors of the editio princeps restore an ‘alep to get the word ‘mt (construct form of ‘mh, that is, “maidservant”). The assumption is that it was an ‘alep that was at the end of the preceding line (a few traces of that line are visible, so there was a preceding line, but *no* traces of an ‘alep are present at the end of that preceding line). The authors of the editio princeps do consider other options (noted on p. 241 of the editio princeps), but they settle on [‘]mt, that is, (the construct form of) “maidservant.” However, I would wish to emphasize that restorations are notoriously difficult things. Thus, without an initial ‘alep actually present, the restoration cannot be considered at all certain. Thus, and this is very important, this inscription might not be about “the maidservant of the King” at all, as the word maidservant is based on a restoration.

(2b) The Restoration Continued. In addition to positing a different letter or two that would result in a different noun (i.e., not “maidservant,” but some other nominal), it would also be possible to posit a verbal form (including even the root mwt, “die,” “dead”….which could make this inscription really interesting… although various other possibilities could also be posited). Again, though, that’s the problem with restorations….they are very uncertain, unless we’re dealing with highly formulaic language (e.g., a legal contract). And even then it’s not always easy. In this case, we do not have a highly formulaic text, and we have very little context, so I consider any particular restoration (whether it be ‘mh or something else) to be only a possibility.

(3a) Orthography and Lexicography. There are a couple of potential problems with the orthography in the Jerusalem Papyrus, the first one particularly concerning. Namely, regarding the words of the Jerusalem Papyrus nblym (with yod as an internal mater lections) and yyn, that is, “jars of wine” or “two jars of wine” (if the term for jar is understood as a dual, which is the way that the authors of the editio princeps wish to understand it), it must be conceded that the orthography of the inscription is problematic. After all, within Semitic languages, this construction (this juxtaposition of two nouns or nominals) is called a “construct chain” (i.e., x of y). And in Semitic construct chains (including Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Ethiopic, etc.), the noun in construct takes the “construct form.” Sometimes there is no discernible difference (at least in the writing system), but when a masculine plural or masculine dual noun is in the construct form, the plural ending îm and the dual ending ayim (see Jouon paragraph 92 g on this) are replaced by the vowel ê (and, most importantly for our purposes) without the mem. That is, the mem is eliminated. Gone. Note, along these lines, that the very same expression is used in the Hebrew Bible, that is, “vessels of wine.” BUT in Standard Biblical Hebrew it is written: nbly.yyn (1 Samuel 25:18; for additional examples of the plural construct form of nbl “jar” in the Bible, see Job 38:37; Lam 4:2). That is, as is standard in Ancient Hebrew, no mem is present in the Biblical form (the yod in the biblical form is a mater lectionis). This is the way it worked in Ancient Hebrew. In essence, therefore, there is a serious orthographic problem (i.e., mistake) in the Jerusalem Papyrus inscription, and a rather large one at that: the word nblym is in construct and so there should be no mem (note that Ezekiel 47:4 and Numbers 9:20 are arguably corrupt; I am grateful to Jason Bembry for mentioning these texts to me) and arguably are reflective of a deep structure that is different from the context in the Jerusalem Papyrus. Of course, someone might posit that in the inscription we have a “frozen form” of some sort, but this would be a very strained argument to make, since we have the very same expression in Standard Biblical Hebrew and the mem is lost…just as it is supposed to be (across the Semitic languages). Someone might propose that although this syntactically like it should be a construct chain, it is not. But that is a really hard argument to make as this construction is basically a textbook case for a construct chain (and that’s the way Biblical Hebrew has it as well). Also, I suppose that someone might attempt to propose some sort of strained argument to account for the mistake in the Jerusalem Papyrus’s orthography, but I’m disinclined to embrace special pleading all that readily, especially in an inscription on papyrus (and thus ostensibly a first-class scribe). We do have some mistakes in inscriptions at times, but this would be a big one for an ancient scribe to make, and one that would be hard to explain for a *native speaker of Ancient Hebrew and a first-tier scribe (for as Professor Joseph Naveh has noted, papyrus was the medium that the most highly educated and gifted of official scribes would use). Conversely, this is the sort of mistake that someone might make if they didn’t know Ancient Hebrew all that well (note that Modern Hebrew often avoids construct forms…with the use of “shel” being a common substition in Modern Hebrew for something that would have been a construct form in Ancient Hebrew). In short, I consider this to be a howler of an error.

(3b) Orthography and Lexicography. It could be contended that the proposed reading (of the editio princeps of the Jerusalem Papyrus) of the place-name N‘rth is problematic. Note that the form in the inscription (i.e., the spelling in the inscription) is the same as that in Joshua 16:7. At first blush, this might seem good. But this may not be the case, once we look more closely at the context of Joshua 16:7. In the Joshua reference, this place-name has a directive heh on it (note the verb yrd “to go down” is present in the Joshua text, so a directive heh, with its semantic range of “direction toward” makes perfect sense). Note also that the standard dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (HALOT), as well as BDB, presuppose that the lexical form of the word in Joshua is n‘rh (so at the very least, the authors of the editio princeps differ with HALOT and BDB [p. 655] on the lexical form of the place name). Thus, the form in Joshua is a result of the presence of the directive heh (thus, again, BDB page 655). Significantly, the form in the Jerusalem Papyrus is preceded by the preposition min (with assimilation of the nun) and so the directive heh would not normally be used in Ancient Hebrew (as the directive heh signifies “direction toward,” not “direction from” and this is something the Rabbis noted long ago, when they reasoned that the directive heh stood in place of a prefixed lamed “to”…so Waltke and O’Connor, paragraph 2.1b, et passim). In short, in Ancient Hebrew, this place-name is N‘rh, and when the directive heh is attached, the form we have (as demonstrated by Joshua 16:7) is N‘rth. Thus, the form that should arguably have been in the Jerusalem Papyrus Inscription is N‘rh, not N‘rth (the “double feminization” line of thought is pretty strained). However, there are exceptions, with a small number of cases with both the preposition min and the directive heh (e.g., Jer 27:16 and Josh 15:10).

(3c) Orthography and Lexicography. In this connection, I should like to mention that, as both Jason Bembry and Joel Baden have emphasized to me (personal communication) that it is certainly possible to understand n’rth as meaning “his young (female) attendant” (i.e., n’rh [nfs meaning “female attendant,” “female maidservant,” etc.] with the 3ms ms possessive suffix….of course, it could also be a 3fs possessive suffix, but in this context, 3ms is more likely). In any case, if one accepts this lexcial understanding (i.e., a common noun, rather than a place-name), then the meaning of the text is certainly different from the way that the authors of the editio princeps understand it, and this understanding (i.e., the common noun) has the elegance of being a fairly common word and with orthography that is standard Ancient Hebrew.

(4) There are also some problems with the script…perhaps in part related to the morphology of some letters, but especially in the realm of the ductus of some letters (the term ductus refers to the number of strokes that form a letter, the direction of those strokes and the order of those strokes). I’ve spent a fair amount of my life looking through a microscope or jeweler’s loop at Old Hebrew ink-inscriptions from excavations. And I have some ductus concerns (forgers can often get the morphology of a letter pretty accurately, but they struggle more with ductus….because palaeographers don’t discuss it very much. As for ductus of some forgeries, I discussed this sort of thing in detail in Maarav back in 2003, with regard to the Moussaieff Ostraca and Jehoash Inscription, etc.). I will be discussing this in the journal article that is currently in preparation and will be in print during the spring of 2017.

Updated 2:30 eastern (Nov 2).

Sincerely,

Christopher Rollston

The New ‘Jerusalem’ Papyrus: Not so Fast…

26 October 2016

Here are some things to remember, as this Jerusalem Papyrus garners attention:

I. The fact that the papyrus itself has been carbon dated to the 7th century BCE certainly does not mean that the writing on the papyrus is ancient In fact, it really means nothing. After all, ancient papyrus is readily available for purchase online (check the web and see!), thus, no modern forger worth his or her salt would forge an inscription on modern papyrus. Rather, he or she would purchase some ancient papyrus online and then write a text on it. It happens fairly often (the Marzeah Papyrus is a good example of this, as is the Jesus Wife Papyrus). In short, for anyone to conclude that this (or any) inscription must be ancient because the papyrus is ancient is quite naïve (For similar statements about inks, see VII, below). Thus, Caveat Eruditus.

II. There are some palaeographic and orthographic anomalies and inconsistencies in this papyrus inscription that are concerning and may suggest that it is modern, not ancient. Thus, again, Caveat Eruditus.

III. Modern forgers often use sensational content….after all this *raises* the price and it *lowers* the critical thinking capacity of those who very much wish for something to be true (e.g., the Jesus Wife Papyrus, the James Ossuary, and Jehoash Inscription, Moussaieff Ostraca, etc.). The content of the Jerusalem Papyrus is certainly sensational…and it is ever so convenient that on this piece with so few words such sensational content was found.

IV. The Jerusalem Papyrus is from the antiquities market and it has been floating around on the market for a few years now. It was not found on an actual archaeological excavation. I saw some good images of it a few years ago in Jerusalem.

V. There are many modern inscriptional forgeries on the market, as I have argued in various publications, for some fifteen years now (most of these articles are available via www.academia.edu). The money that modern forgers and dealers can make on modern forgeries is astronomical, consistently in the five and six figure range. The motivation is strong. In this case, this papyrus was seized, but that does not mean that it could not have been produced in the modern period with the intent of marketing it.

VI. Forgeries are often reported to have “been found here, or there, at some specific location. This has been the case since long before the Shapira Forgeries of the mid to late 1800s. And it was the case with the Hebron Philistine Inscriptions, the Jehoash Inscription, the Ivory Pomegranate, the James Ossuary and so many others. In short, I’m sure that some story will surface about the purported “find spot” of this papyrus inscription. I would urge caution, though, as forgers and dealers have a strong vested interest in attempting to dupe.

VII. Regarding ink, it is also worth emphasizing, as I did long ago in my first Maarav articles on forgeries (2003, and 2004) that the chemical composition of inks has been the subject of study for some time (note, for example, that in the editio princeps of the Lachish Ostraca, published in 1938, there is reference to the chemical composition of the ink). Thus, forgers have the capacity to know that which they must replicate (in terms of chemical composition of the inks) for an ink to be the same, or virtually the same, in chemical composition to actual ancient inks. Furthermore, the core component of carbon-based inks is ancient carbonized remains….and such remains are readily available (e.g., on excavations and the antiquities market) in the form of burnt wood and so the capacity is present for faked inks to be produced in the modern period that yield an ancient C-14 date. Moreover, of course, a clever forger might simply purchase some ancient inscription on the antiquities market (e.g., one with mundane content and so not a high-value inscription) and then carefully scrape the ink from that inscription and then mix that (dry) ink with water and then use that ink in a ]modern-forgery with sensational content. Using such methods, a forged, modern inscription could pass all the lab tests. In short, this is a game of cat and mouse and modern forgers have substantial motivation for producing modern forgeries with ink that can “pass all the tests.” Again, caveat eruditus [NB: the material in this paragraph, that is, VII, was added on October 27, 2016, a day after my initial post].

VIII. In short, to those wishing to declare that the letters on this papyrus inscription are ancient, I would say: ‘Not so fast!’

IX. Ultimately, I believe that there is a fair chance that although the papyrus itself is ancient the ink letters are actually modern…that is, this inscription is something that I would classify as a possible modern forgery.

X. Recently, I signed a contract with Eerdmans Publishing for a volume (almost entirely completed at this time) entitled _Forging History in the Ancient World of the Bible & the Modern World of Biblical Studies_. The Jerusalem Papyrus inscription will be in that volume…

Dr. Christopher A. Rollston, George Washington University

Wife of Jesus Coptic Papyrus: Brief Methodological Musings

10 April 2014

papyrus_front_lg

The first time that I saw a good image of this papyrus (early fall of 2012), I was suspicious about its authenticity and told my wisdom lit class (which happened to ask about it one evening, during a class in the early fall of 2012) that I believed it to be a probable modern forgery….the ink and the script just didn’t look right to me. That’s still the way that I feel. I have worked in Sahidic Coptic for ca. twenty years, having studied it formally during my doctoral program and having taught it recently at the graduate level. Moreover, I’ve read pretty heavily in the Nag Hammadi Corpus as well. And Hellenistic Greek is also in my wheelhouse, as are ancient inscriptions in general.

As for the laboratory tests, the carbon tests on the papyrus demonstrate that the papyrus is ancient. That’s no surprise. Just as modern forgers of ostraca use ancient pottery sherds for their logia, so also a modern forger of a papyrus inscription would use some ancient papyrus (which, although certainly not as readily available as pottery, is still available….with or without ancient ink). It should be emphasized that papyrus was often reused (note the phenomenon of palimpsests) and so the putative date for the papyrus itself (prior to the Common Era) is not an important issue at all, neither for authenticity, nor against authenticity. It is an absolute non-issue. Also, the fact that the “ink” used on this is consistent with the chemical composition of ancient ink is also not necessarily evidence for antiquity. After all, the chemical composition of ancient “ink” has been known for some time and the chemicals available in antiquity are certainly still available today. Thus, the chemical composition of the ink is not necessarily an argument in favor of authenticity. Also, it is also possible for someone to scrape off (e.g., from a papyrus) ancient ink from the words of some mundane ancient inscription….and then add a little water to the dried ink which had been scrapped off and then resuse the ink. Some people (including some scholars) assume that modern forgers are not all that bright (and thus would not be that clever in forging something). In contrast, I believe that modern forgers (at least from the final quarter of the 20th century and on) are quite sharp…..and for good reason they try to be very clever: after all, there is much money to be made and modern forgers knows this….so, as for this piece, I remain very suspicious of its authenticity. Perhaps it’s ancient….but I doubt it.

I should also note that if it turns out that Jesus of Nazareth was married (i.e., if some good, credible, first century evidence comes to light at some point in the future and demonstrates this), that sounds fine to me. In other words, I have no theological objections to this sort of thing. My concerns about this papyrus (which is later than the first century CE anyway), are only epigraphic in nature. I have no vested interest one way or the other.

Sincerely, Christopher Rollston

LABORATORY TESTING OF ANCIENT INSCRIPTIONS: METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS

9 April 2013

LABORATORY TESTING OF ANCIENT INSCRIPTIONS:
METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS

Christopher A. Rollston
Visiting Professor of Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures
George Washington University
Washington, D.C.

INRODUCTION

One of the most auspicious developments in “forgery detection” during recent years has been the development and usage of laboratory methods to attempt to determine deauthenticity. Most welcome, therefore, is the recent report (e.g., the article by Stephanie Pappas on the Huffington Post) which discusses the laboratory tests on the Gospel of Judas. It seems to me that this is very useful and I think that these results bode well for that particular document (especially because National Geographic’s “Standards and Practices” people are among the very best, and they clearly maintained strict protocols with regard to the laboratory analyses of the Gospel of Judas). Moreover, it has also been reported that the “Jesus Wife Papyrus” has been sent off for laboratory tests. I applaud this as well (I should hasten to add, as discussed below, that it would be particularly useful if the actual lab reports, rather than just the results, would be published as well. For example, it would be very useful to see the graphs generated by the spectroscopy).

I would also wish to emphasize at this time, though, that laboratory reports also require an interpreter. Those of us in the humanities sometimes seem to forget this (at least in practice). Here are a few scenarios, most of which are now attested in the laboratory analysis of actual epigraphic objects from the antiquities market (see section II below). Scenario 1: an epigraphic object is sent for analysis and the laboratory finds modern contaminants under the patina. At that point, the hard scientist has to make a decision. She or he could suggest that the piece is a modern forgery. This is entirely rational and I think quite convincing in most cases. However, it would be possible for him or her to propose that the modern contaminants under the patina could be the result of storage and handling practices (and thus they might suggest that the piece is actually ancient). In other words, the hard scientist must make a decision about the best way to understand the laboratory results. Scenario 2: Or again, let us say that someone has a potsherd from the antiquities market with an ink inscription on it and they send it off to a laboratory for thermoluminescence testing. The results for the thermoluminescence test would probably suggest that the pottery was indeed fired in antiquity. The hard scientist might conclude that this inscription is indeed ancient, based on the results of the thermoluminescence testing. However, this could be wrong. After all, a savvy forger would surely use an ancient potsherd and then forge an inscription on it, in a script and language that corresponds very nicely with the region and time period from which the potsherd came. That is, just because the potsherd is ancient doesn’t mean that the inscription is ancient. Scenario 3: Similarly, someone might send a piece of papyrus off for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry testing (an advanced form of carbon dating) in order to determine if the writing on it is ancient. The AMS test might very well indicate that the papyrus is ancient. However, it would not be prudent for a hard scientist automatically to conclude that the text was authentic, as ancient papyrus is something that can be purchased on the antiquities market and a modern forger worth his or her salt would be wise enough to use that as the medium. Scenario 4: Someone might propose that analyzing the ink should be considered decisive. This is difficult, as finding enough carbon in ink is very difficult (i.e., even for an AMS test, which requires less Carbon 14). But someone might suggest that spectroscopic analysis of the ink could be used, so as to determine the chemical composition of the ink. I believe that this could be useful, at least at times. But I would also hasten to add that enough is known now about the production of ink in antiquity (and the chemical makeup of many inks) that a savvy forger could also find some ancient carbonized remains (e.g., a piece of carbonized timber found on an excavation) and use that as the basis for the production of ink that appears ancient indeed, employing also data known about the rest of the chemicals often found in actual ancient inks (e.g., the right amount of iron, etc.).

For these sorts of reasons, I believe that caution should be the modus operandi. Of course, it is often suggested that forgers are not really that gifted, that savvy, and it is also suggested at times that no one who actually had such knowledge and talent would ever produce modern forgeries (i.e., someone that smart would not do it because of ethical reservations about such activities). Actually, I am convinced that the best modern forgers have formidable intellects and abilities and I think that the recent past demonstrates this rather convincingly, as some modern forgers have fooled some very gifted scholars. Moreover, I find it to be sweet that someone would assume that no one capable of producing really good modern forgeries would do so, but I am not convinced that brains and ethics necessarily always go hand in hand. Thus, I continue to be convinced that the future will see epigraphic forgeries that are absolutely undetectable. Indeed, I have already seen some inscriptions (and analyzed them microscopically) that are virtually perfect, from the script and language to the medium and the patina. I suspect that this will only increase in the coming years.

In addition, I must also admit that I think the field of epigraphy should be very careful about determining the credentials for the laboratory and the hard scientists. Not all labs are equal and not all hard scientists are equal. And there is always an interpretive component. Furthermore, I think that it should go without saying that those with a vested interest in the results should have no part in the sending of pieces to laboratories.

The remainder of this blog post focuses on protocols for laboratory testing as well as a discussion of some laboratory tests which have been performed on epigraphic objects during recent years, including some of the problems with some of these tests. Most of the discussion that follows first appeared in print in an article of mine published a decade ago in the journal Maarav (2003) [footnote 1]. In any case, the focus will be on (1) useful protocols for laboratory testing, (2) followed by concrete discussion of lab testing, based on published lab reports (and some of the problems with these). The hope of all this is that the field can continue to become more and more conscious of the need for the employment of strict protocols for laboratory testing and the importance of understanding the interpretive component that is part of laboratory analysis.

I. PROPOSED PROTOCOLS FOR LABORATORY TESTING

Owners, agents of owners, buyers, agents of buyers, dealers of antiquity, and epigraphists are often interested in having laboratory tests performed on non-provenanced epigraphic objects. In addition, these groups are often required to assess the results and significance of laboratory tests. For methodological reasons, I would argue that certain protocols should be adhered to so that the laboratory tests can actually function as valuable tools.

(1) First, laboratories must be demonstrably legitimate institutions, with the capability of performing the appropriate laboratory tests, and with credentialed individuals performing the tests. Because most epigraphists are not au courante with regard to the best scientific laboratories, there is the potential for substandard laboratories to “authenticate” objects without sufficient scientific bases, and for epigraphists to “accept” such results as authoritative. Furthermore, laboratories that have “authenticated” forged objects (e.g., because of incompetence or collusion) are not to be considered the most reliable and authoritative for future tests [footnote 2].

(2) Second, it is prudent for multiple laboratories, performing the same basic tests, on the same objects, to be used; moreover, it is also imperative that said labs do not communicate together regarding the objects. It is preferable for at least two labs to be used, but cases of conflicting results will necessitate the use of additional labs [footnote 3].

(3) It is of fundamental importance that the laboratory tests be double blind. That is, those requesting the test should not know the names of the laboratories or scientists performing the laboratory tests, and the laboratories should not know the names of the owners, potential buyers, dealers, or (ideally) even the name(s) of the epigraphist(s) studying the epigraphs. Laboratory tests that are not double blind are of minimal value, or perhaps of no value at all, because violation of this protocol ultimately compromises the process, either in theory, or in fact [footnote 4].

(4) Generally, no information about the epigraphic object’s potential or probable antiquity (and thus authenticity) should be given. The reason for this is simply that the scientist performing the laboratory tests, if he or she knows the expected or desired results of the test, can factor in various data in particular ways in order to achieve the expected or desired result [footnote 5].

(5) The full report of all tests should be made available in complete form in the formal publication of the inscription. Laboratory tests that violate these protocols, rigorous though the lab tests may appear, are to be considered of modest value, or of no value at all [footnote 6].

(6) With high profile epigraphs or corpora of epigraphs, when it is readily apparent that there are problems with the laboratory tests performed previously, museums, departments of antiquity, and universities will sometimes need to intervene and appoint disinterested specialists to analyze said epigraphs or corpora. Of course, in circumstances such as this it will not be possible for the tests to be double-blind. Nonetheless, it is expected that a full publication of these lab results will be satisfactory [footnote 7].

II.CASE STUDIES OF SELECTED TYPES OF LABORATORY TESTS

Laboratory tests can be of substantial usefulness in “deauthenticating” epigraphic objects [footnote 8]. Because laboratory tests have been widely used in recent years, and because “laboratory authentication” is often considered definitive, the usefulness of laboratory tests, especially the necessary protocols for laboratory tests and the necessary caveats regarding their decisiveness, merits discussion. For the sake of clarity, various specific laboratory analyses will be discussed; however, it should be noted that this discussion is not exhaustive, but rather illustrative. Finally, although I have attempted to make this discussion accessible, it is inevitable that some specialized vocabulary will be used [footnote 9].

A. PATINAS ON MEDIA AND RADIOCARBON DATING OF ORGANIC MATERIALS

The “Moussaieff Ostraca” have been subjected to certain laboratory tests [footnote 10]. The McCrone affirmed that the soil on the ostraca was Middle Eastern and that the chemical composition of the ink was very similar to that of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This data is, of course, of limited usefulness, as carbon based ink is not difficult to produce, and the presence of Middle Eastern soil on an object ultimately proves absolutely nothing about the antiquity of an object [footnote 11].

Mikrofokus Oy Lab focused its analysis on a white patina covering the surface of the ostraca. Using a SEM-EDS (i.e., a scanning electron microscope equipped with an EDS), the McCrone lab had determined that there was a micrometeorite or pyrophoric igniter powder (e.g., from a cigarette lighter) contaminating a sample. Moreover, Mikrofokus Oy affirmed the presence of “spherical particles found which seem to be inside the lower layer of the white material” (i.e., under the patina). The lab then noted that the particles were composed of silicon, and that they were identical in form, size, and chemical composition to those commonly found among flyash particles in industrial environments. Mikrofokus Oy suggested that these were indeed modern contaminants, but ultimately proposed that such particles need not mean that the ostraca were forgeries, even though they were found under the patina. Variable handling and storage practices were assumed to be the cause of this anomaly. Moreover, because producing such a patina today would require a special environment, access to calcite crystals of the right size, specialized knowledge, and a long time, (e.g., “years”), the lab concluded that the patina on the ostraca was a natural precipitation product, and that “what is under the white material must then be genuine.” Note that the Mikrofokus Oy lab, however, was able to duplicate the patina on the ostraca quite closely, using sodium silicate, calcium carbonate, and water.

Obviously, Mikrofokus Oy’s interpretation is a possible interpretation of the data generated by their SEM-EDS test, but it is my opinion that this test does not actually generate much confidence. That is, a number of their interpretations of these test results are potentially troubling. For example, the modern contaminants under the patina could justifiably be understood as being there because the patina was produced during the modern period. Indeed, this is perfectly plausible. Also, the Mikrofokus Oy laboratory assumes that the patina is probably not modern because few people have the appropriate chemicals and the ability to produce such a patina. However, within their own report, Mikrofokus Oy stated that they were able to produce a similar patina, within a very short period. The position of Mikrofokus Oy seems to be that if the patina is not easy to reproduce, then it is safe to assume that it was not done in this case on these ostraca. This is not, however, a necessary conclusion, and I would argue that it is not even necessarily a logical conclusion. In short, it is my opinion that although these tests do not necessarily demonstrate that the Moussaieff Ostraca must be disqualified (i.e., considered forgeries), neither is it possible to state in any way that these tests are non-problematic, and authenticate the ostraca.

The Geological Survey of Israel performed SEM-EDS analyses on the patina of the “Ya‘akov Ossuary” [footnote 12] The results showed that the patina is composed mainly of CaC03 (93%) and contains Si – 5.0%; A1 – 0.7%; Fe – 0.3%; P – 0.4%; and Mg – 0.2%. The report notes that there are no modern elements (such as modern pigments), and the patina adheres firmly to the stone. Again, this is valuable information, but it is imperative that one not conclude or assume, on the basis of this evidence, that this entire inscription is ancient. Rather, this test simply demonstrates that this object need not be disqualified on the basis of the chemical composition of the patina. It certainly does not authenticate the patina. Indeed, the report implicitly concedes this point with the words: “no evidence that might detract from the authenticity of the patina and the inscription was found.” This is an important and honest assessment; however, it must be noted that the absence of certain anomalies in the chemical composition of a patina is not the same as a demonstration of the antiquity of a patina [footnote 13].

The Geological Survey of Israel’s official report for the Jehoash Inscription is much more detailed than the one published (initially) for the ossuary, but this official report is replete with some problems, alas [footnote 14]. For example, (1) the report assumes that if the patina on the medium (in this case, stone) essentially “matches” that which is in the grooves of the inscription, the inscription must be ancient. This is problematic, as it is possible to argue that a modern forger had carefully chosen a stone, cleaned it with non-treated water (e.g., water from a pure spring), incised it, and then the stone was buried and a patina “cultivated,” either passively (just letting it develop naturally with the compounds in the soil and rainfall) or actively (i.e., “watering” the soil at times, and adding some “safe” compounds, such as lime, iron, etc.) that might assist in the development of the patina. The result would be a patina on the surface of the rock that reflected a chemical composition that was similar to that of the inscribed area. Of course, Goren has now demonstrated conclusively that the precise patina described by the Geological Survey of Israel could be produced quite readily in a lab [footnote 15]. (2) The Geological Survey of Israel put enormous credence in the fact that within the patina were organic materials that could be dated (on the basis of 14C) to antiquity. Again, this is an interpretation, but because ancient organic materials are readily available on the market (as well as to those associated with excavations), this cannot be considered the interpretation. A clever forger is certainly capable of attempting to dupe a lab technician by augmenting a fabricated patina with some organic material. Moreover, with regard to the Jehoash Inscription in particular, this is now the most convincing interpretation [footnote 16].

During the past fifty years, of course, Carbon 14 tests have indeed been very helpful in assessing the antiquity of organic material at times. For example, Carbon 14 tests (AMS) were performed on various Dead Sea Scrolls, and the results were decisive, demonstrating the antiquity of the scrolls and providing a control on palaeographic analysis [footnote 17]. Moreover, several decades ago, Carbon 14 tests were performed on the “Hebron Documents” and the tests yielded a modern date, a date that has stood, pace Mendenhall [footnote 18]. Nevertheless, several caveats must be kept in mind even with Carbon 14. (1) Variable handling and storage conditions can have an impact on laboratory tests such as Carbon 14. (2) A Carbon 14 test of organic material (e.g., leather, papyrus) does not necessarily demonstrate the antiquity of the inscription, as pieces of ancient leather and papyrus are sometimes found without visible writing, and can be readily used by a modern forger as the “medium” (i.e., material) for a forgery.

B. THERMOLUMINESCENCE TESTING

Thermoluminescence testing is a potentially important means of determining the age of an object that has suffered in some sort of a conflagration. In essence, very high temperatures reset the thermoluminescence “clock.” Hence, fired ceramics (and “burned” bullae) can be subjected to a thermoluminescence test, and an approximate date of firing can be determined. Thermoluminescence testing on non-provenanced objects, however, is generally not nearly as precise as radiocarbon dating, because there are numerous (quite imprecise) variables to calculate. For example, the chemical content of the soil in which an object has been deposited, the proximity of rocks, and even the types of rocks, all impact the thermoluminescence signal. Therefore, non-provenanced objects, and even provenanced objects not accompanied by samples of the soil surrounding the objects, yield only very approximate dates, with a plus or minus of centuries.

Thermoluminescence texts were recently performed on Hebrew bullae that had ostensibly been fired in some sort of conflagration. Namely, during January 1997, a thermoluminescence test on a bulla was performed by Doreen Stoneham at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art in Oxford. The report is important for a number of reasons. For example, it states that the sample was obtained in “powdered form on 8 January 1997” by Doreen Stoneham, and that it was “presumed” to have been taken from a “small fragment of terracotta.” Stoneham concludes that “using standard methods and techniques it is estimated that the material of the sample was “last fired between 1100 and 1800 years ago” and that this is consistent with the “suggested period of manufacture of the object concerned.” The report concludes by noting that the “result is given in good faith; however the laboratory takes no responsibility for financial loss incurred through an erroneous report being given,” that is, with a certain amount of customary legalese [footnote 19]. Obviously, this thermoluminescence test suggests that the “powder” analyzed was ancient [footnote 20].

Ralf Kotalla of the Ralf Kotalla “Laboratory” (the quotation marks are part of the official document’s report) performed a thermoluminescence test on an Iron Age bulla as well. Kotalla’s report states that the bulla was “2700 years old +/- 20% of the overall age,” and even notes that it originated in the “Orient.” In addition, Kotalla notes that the “assumed age on the basis of stylistic characteristics [is] appr. 2700 years” [footnote 21]. These thermoluminescence test results are especially interesting, because Kotalla was told the precise date of this bulla (i.e., based on the script it dates to ca. 700 BCE). For this reason, he was able to factor in numerous variables and produce a date that corresponded perfectly with the desired result. Stoneham’s test yielded an honest result, but Kotalla’s reflects severe bias. Note that I am not necessarily questioning the antiquity of these bullae. Indeed, for “fired” bullae, a thermoluminescence test is potentially helpful [footnote 22].

C. RADIOGRAPHIC ANALYSES

Spectrographic analyses can be very useful as well, for example, in determining the composition of a metal. Two inscribed arrowheads were analyzed at Conservation Laboratory of the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. several years ago. Based on the script, the arrowheads appeared to derive from the Late Bronze Age. The precise results of the spectrographic analyses were as follows: Arrowhead 1: CU 78.925%; ZN – ; PB 7.166%; FE 1.878%; SN 11.940%; and AS 0.091%. Arrowhead 2: CU 73.731%; ZN 0.035%; PB 5.055%; FE 0.981%; SN 20.198%; and AS – ; The absence of zinc in the first arrowhead and the minimal amount in the second arrowhead is important, since copper alloyed with zinc (brass) is rarely found in ancient artifacts. However, McCarter has astutely noted that the “antiquity of the arrowhead is no guarantee of the antiquity of the inscription,” and he states further that “there is now reason to believe that forged arrowheads have begun to appear on the antiquities market” [footnote 23]. The Freer also subjected these arrowheads to microscopic examination as well, and this revealed that the corrosion on the surface of the blades is also present in the incised grooves of their inscriptions. It has been argued that this “mitigates strongly against the possibility that either inscription is modern” [footnote 24]. I concur that this information is helpful, and I am not questioning the antiquity of the inscriptions on these arrowheads. Nonetheless, I would note that creating a corrosion on the surface of a metal object (either before or after cleaning the object) is not difficult for the right person, with access to the right chemicals [footnote 25].

Ultimately, because some forgers are quite savvy about laboratory tests (and because lab scientists have sometimes failed to consider the skills of forgers and their associates), such tests are often helpful, but cannot normally be considered decisive in determining authenticity. Obviously, laboratory tests can disqualify an inscription, but this is not the same as authentication.

D. ANCIENT TOOLS

At this juncture, I should also like to note another type of problematic data that is used to argue for the antiquity of an inscription, namely, that of the tools employed to produce it. For example, regarding the Ya‘akov Ossuary, it was noted that there were “no signs of the use of a modern tool or instrument found” [footnote 26]. Again, this is useful information, but it could never be considered decisive. A shrewd forger could certainly have used an ancient tool, ancient worked metal, or modern bronze or iron consisting of the same composition as ancient tools, so as to have produced the entire inscription, or a portion thereof. Methodologically, it is simply not sage to assume that a modern forger would not take such precautions. Indeed, I would argue that a good modern forger would definitely take such precautions, for modest precautions yield large dividends.

In sum, the use of laboratory tests for inscriptions from the market is auspicious, but the labs conducting the tests must be vetted, protocols for the testing must be put in place in every case, and the results of the laboratory tests must be fully published so that they can be scrutinized as well. In short, there is much to be hopeful about, but methodological doubt must be maintained as well.

[footnote 1]. Rollston, “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs I: Pillaged Antiquities, Northwest Semitic Forgeries, and Protocols for Laboratory Tests.” MAARAV 10 (2003): 135-193.

[footnote 2]. P. Kyle McCarter, Jr. has suggested (personal communication) that it could be very useful to submit three epigraphs to the labs: the epigraph of interest, another that is definitely a fake, and a third that is definitely ancient. That is, he is suggesting the use of “control groups,” as it were.

[footnote 3]. Note, for example, that excavators routinely send samples of organic materials to multiple (often two) labs. The point is that using multiple labs can function as a “control” of sorts.

[footnote 4]. The point here is that recently owners, dealers, or agents thereof, have been taking objects to the lab of their choice, verbalizing expected results, and paying for the tests. This is hardly the ideal.

[footnote 5]. With regard to this issue, note the problems with the thermoluminescence tests discussed earlier.

[footnote 6]. Note that the initial report on the Ya‘akov Ossuary published by the Geological Survey of Israel did not contain much of the raw data or summaries that are to be expected of a SEM-EDS analysis. See A. Rosenfeld and S. Ilani, “SEM-EDS Analyses of Patina,” 29.

[footnote 7]. In my opinion, the IAA should be applauded for doing precisely this during 2003 (for the Ya‘akov Ossuary and the Jehoash Inscription).

[footnote 8] The (2003) report from the commission convened by the IAA to do laboratory analyses of the Ya‘akov Ossuary and the Jehoash Inscription demonstrates this point. Needless to say, I am not convinced by those who have criticized the conclusions of the IAA committee. Indeed, some of the attempted “rebuttals of the report,” read like apologias. In any case, for a brief, but cautious and sound discussion of laboratory testing, see also N. S. Fox, In the Service of the King, 30-31.

[footnote 9]. For a cursory review of the methods discussed here, see W. Ashmore and R. J. Sharer, Discovering our Past: A Brief Introduction to Archaeology, 3rd ed (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), esp. 159-168. For analysis using a scanning electron microscope, see also my discussion: C.A. Rollston, “Laboratory Analysis of the Moussaeff Ostraca using the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) with an Energy Dispersive X-Ray Microanalyzer (EDS),” 8.

[footnote 10]. For a summary of the lab reports, see C.A. Rollston, “Laboratory Analysis of the Moussaïeff Ostraca using the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) with an Energy Dispersive X-Ray Microanalyzer (EDS),” 8-9.

[footnote 11]. Regarding the composition of the ink of ancient inscriptions, see A. Lewis, “Report on the Lachish Letters with Remarks upon the Use of Iron Inks in Antiquity,” in The Lachish Letters, ed. H. Torczyner (Tur-Sinai), 138-193. Of course, carbon (of various sorts) is often found on excavations. The production of carbon ink that appears ancient (e.g., on a 14C test) should not be problematic in the modern period.

[footnote 12]. A Rosenfeld and S. Ilani, “SEM-EDS Analyses of Patina Samples,” BARev 28 (Nov/Dec 2002): 29.

[footnote 13]. Note that there are various other problems with this report as well. For example, the report states that the gray patina found on the surface of the ossuary was “found also within some of the letters, although the inscription was cleaned and the patina is therefore absent from several letters.” However, there is no statement of precisely which letters had this patina and which lacked it (an important issue for various reasons, but especially because of the suggestion that the second half of the inscription was from a later hand). Of course, forgers can use the issue of “cleaning” to their advantage, in various ways.

[footnote 14]. S. Ilani, A. Rosenfeld, and M. Dvorachek, “A Stone Tablet with an Ancient Hebrew Inscription Attributed to Yehoash, King of Judea: Archaeometry and Epigraphy,” GSI Current Research 13 (2003): 109-13.

[footnote 15]. Y. Goren, “An Alternative Interpretation of the Stone Tablet.”

[footnote 16]. Goren proposed this in his article “An Alternative Interpretation of the Stone Tablet,” 7. E. Boaretto’s final report for the IAA also states that the carbon material in the patina of the Jehoash Inscription does not indicate authenticity.

[footnote 17]. See G. Doudna, “Dating the Scrolls on the Basis of Radiocarbon Analysis,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years, ed. P.W. Flint and J. C. VanderKam (Leiden: Brill, 1998), vol. 1: 430-471.

[footnote 18]. G.E. Mendenhall, “Philistine Documents,” 99.

[footnote 19]. This report is printed in the editio princeps of various non-provenanced inscriptions, namely: R. Deutsch, Messages from the Past: Hebrew Bullae from the Time of Isaiah through the Destruction of the First Temple: Shlomo Moussaieff Collection and an Up to Date Corpus (Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publications, 1997), 169. Recently, R. Deutsch also edited a Festschrift in honor of S. Moussaieff, a collector of antiquities, and published a number of additional bullae. See Shlomo: Studies in Epigraphy, Iconography, History, and Archaeology in Honor of Shlomo Moussaieff (Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publications, 2003).

[footnote 20]. The date yielded by this test are very broad, and considerably later than might have been expected for an Iron Age bulla. Among the reasons for this are (1) the large number of variables that must be calculated, but cannot be done with precision without data regarding the context in which it was ostensibly found; (2) the theoretical possibility that it suffered a conflagration centuries after its date of manufacture; (3) the theoretical possibility that it has been exposed to some sort of irradiation.

[footnote 21]. For the report, see R. Deutsch, Messages from the Past, 168.

[footnote 22]. I should like to propose that epigraphists and laboratories should anticipate that some forgers may attempt to carve bullae (in relief) from ceramics fired in antiquity, and then to patinate the “epigraph.” Of course, it should be noted that for ostraca, thermoluminescence tests are useless (i.e., a test performed on a fired potsherd) as a forger will find ample sherds in the Middle East upon which to pen his or her logia.

[footnote 23]. P. K. McCarter, Jr., “Two Bronze Arrowheads with Archaic Alphabetic Inscriptions,” in Eretz-Israel 26: Frank Moore Cross Volume, ed. B.A. Levine, et al., (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1999), 126-127.

[footnote 24]. P. K. McCarter, Jr., “Two Bronze Arrowheads,” 127.

[footnote 25]. That is, a forger could take a “blank” ancient bronze arrowhead, prepare the surface, forge an inscription, and then create a corrosion (or some type of patina). David A. Scott, senior scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute, has stated (personal communication) that in this case, “the patina under the inscription would be different than the patina over the rest of the surface.” That is, Scott argues that it would be detectable. However, he affirms that the arrowhead “would have to be cut” (and then it should be possible “to tell by metallography that the inscription was added and not original to the object).” If the arrowhead was not cut, Scott suggests that “it should still be possible” to make determinations regarding the differences in the patinas (and thus the antiquity of the inscription itself), but he stated that one would then “have trouble describing the process easily.” For more data about these subjects, see “D.A. Scott, Copper and Bronze in Art: Corrosion, Colorants, Conservation (Getty Conservation Institute, 2002). Ultimately, the point is that even a corrosion should not automatically be assumed to be indicative of antiquity. Certain types of corrosions can be created; therefore, sophisticated laboratory tests (sometimes destructive) are needed to determine the depth and nature of the corrosion in order to assess the antiquity of the inscription.

[footnote 26]. A. Rosenfeld and S. Ilani, “SEM-EDS Analyses of Patina Samples,” BARev 28 (Nov/Dec 2002): 29.

REFLECTING ON SOME OF THE MOTIVATIONS OF FORGERS

15 March 2012

Various motivations can be deduced (with some certitude) for the production of forgeries. (1) Venality is certainly a component present in the production and sale of forgeries. Non-provenanced inscriptions routinely sell for four, five, and even six figures. Some recent non-provenanced inscriptions have been valued at seven figures. (2) Some forgeries are arguably the result of “sour grapes” (e.g., a student purged from a Northwest Semitic epigraphy program) or professional rivalry, with the forger hoping to “dupe” the “offender.” (3) Naturally, sometimes a forgery can be a prank. For example, the forger of the Hebron Documents was probably a prankster (or a dolt, or both). (4) Moreover, there is a certain amount of prestige associated with being the person who “collects,” “vets,” or “finds” a significant “ancient epigraph” from the market. Indeed, the public (and even scholars within the field) can sometimes lionize such people, often suspending critical mental faculties (and thus assessments of antiquity) because of “sensational” non-provenanced epigraphs. (5) Religion and politics are also strong motives for the production of a forgery. For example, there was arguably a strong religious motivation for the production of the Shapira Fragments (and the initial aura surrounding them). The fact that the Jehoash Inscription was “reported to have been found in the region of the Temple Mount” has political and religious overtones. Ultimately, forgers are arguably motivated by a combination of such factors, and, of course, with each success, hubris is fostered.

Finally, I should like to note that those who suggest that “knowledgeable people” would not engage in the production or vetting of a forgery are being rather naïve. The fact of the matter is that even gifted scholars have been implicated for the production of forgeries. For example, Metzger has stated that former Princeton classicist Coleman-Norton (Metzger’s Doktorvater) concocted an apocryphal story about finding a manuscript of a Greek translation of the Latin Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum (in the North African town of Fedhala), and then published a detailed article about his sensational “find.” That is, to assume that bright, well-trained people are always characterized by professional ethics is belied by “epigraphic history.”

This post is a selection from my article in Maarav 10 (2003): 135-193…and from pages 191-193 in particular.




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