On August 3, 2010, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced the discovery in a press release that called the bracelet “extraordinary,” “unique.” There was no end to the IAA’s superlatives: “unusual,” “intriguing,” “fascinating.” (Was there an advance hint of trouble in the press release’s observation that the bracelet was “extraordinarily well preserved”?)
The bracelet was probably used by the village ruler, according to Karen Covello-Paran, the IAA archaeologist who directed the excavation. “The person who could afford such a bracelet was apparently very well-off financially,” she observed.
The bracelet has five little knobs on it. One was identified by Covello-Paran as “a horned structure.” She noted that in “neighboring lands gods and rulers were depicted wearing horned crowns.” Horns were also “the symbol of the storm god and they represented power, fertility and law.”
The bracelet was discovered in the first Late Bronze Age village ever found in northern Israel. More specifically, it lay within an “estate house” that included a paved courtyard surrounded by rooms. The site, now known as Ramat Razim, lies about 6 miles north of the large contemporaneous urban site of Hazor.
The remarkable discovery was widely reported in the press.
Answer: B
Immediately after the issuance of the IAA press release, Robert Deutsch, one 056of Israel’s leading antiquities dealers, announced that the bracelet is not 3,500 years old but rather a modern Bedouin bracelet between 50 and 80 years old. Similar bracelets, he said, can be purchased in Jerusalem’s Old City for three dollars. He posted a recently acquired example to prove his point.
The antagonism between the IAA and Deutsch has a special intensity. Indeed, “antagonism” may be the wrong word; “hatred” would be better. The IAA has ruined Deutsch’s life. Whether justified or not may be decided in the near future. Deutsch is one of two remaining defendants in the so-called “forgery trial of the century” that has been going on in Jerusalem since December 29, 2004. (That year is not a typo.)
Deutsch is charged with forging the Moussaieff ostraca, one of which records a three-shekel contribution to Solomon’s Temple.a Another of his alleged forgeries is the famous seal impression of Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch ben Neriyahu.b The case has destroyed Deutsch’s scholarly career. He had been teaching epigraphy at Haifa University. Then his contract was not renewed. He had been an area supervisor at Tel Aviv University’s excavation at Megiddo, but his services were no longer needed. Deutsch has threatened to sue the IAA at the conclusion of the case, which he fully expects will exonerate him.c
The IAA is also heavily invested in the case. For the IAA, Deutsch is a major “bad guy.” Shuka Dorfman, the IAA director, once called the other remaining defendant in the case “the tip of the iceberg.” Deputy director Uzi Dahari claims the conspiracy included an “honored Israeli archaeologist.” For Amir Ganor, head of the IAA fraud unit, this forgery case is the zenith of his career. The government has spent millions on the prosecution, so the prosecutor, Dan Bahat (not the well-known Jerusalem archaeologist of the same name), also has a lot at stake in the outcome; his career is on the line.
Yet the case has produced no smoking gun. Two of the original defendants have simply been dismissed from the case. A third pleaded guilty to a minor offense and received a sentence of a few months of probation. So the government has a lot hanging on the remaining two defendants, one of whom is Deutsch. And, in nearly 10,000 pages of testimony, no one has testified that Deutsch is a forger.
Deutsch’s charge that the bronze bracelet is a modern Bedouin product was naturally a potentially troubling matter for the IAA, but excavator Covello-Paran was confident. The bracelet was a “fantastic” discovery from an “incredible site” that included a standing stone in a cultic room. The bracelet had been found in a clear destruction layer of the Late Bronze Age. It was recovered from “below a massive stone collapse … Not a single [pot]sherd was post Late Bronze Age … We are absolutely sure. There is no doubt about it … The bracelet was found in a clear archaeological context … together with an Egyptian scarab … The date is unquestionable.” Moreover, the style of the bracelet, she said, relates to another bronze piece found next to it. And there were no later intrusions. She firmly rejected Deutsch’s contention.
One leading Israeli archaeologist, Elliot Braun, accused Deutsch of unjustifiably “heap[ing] shame on a colleague who has excavated the object and has no profit motive for promoting its identification as a true antiquity.”
So Deutsch went to the books. He produced a volume titled The Art of Jordan, edited by the distinguished archaeologist Piotr Bienkowski,1 which contains a section on folk jewelry produced in the early 20th century. The discussion is illustrated with two bracelets nearly identical to the one excavated by Covello-Paran, but they are dated by Bienkowski to the “first half of the 20th century.” Another identical bracelet from the early 20th century is illustrated in a 1908 book by the well-known Czech explorer Alois Musil.2
This time the IAA excavator has remained silent and the IAA has quietly removed her excavation from its Web site. The deletion has received almost no press notice as of this writing.
What apparently happened, according to Deutsch, is that the site sits on a slope. Unaware, a modern villager built his home on top of a Late Bronze Age tomb. The IAA excavator interpreted the early-20th-century house, including the bracelet, on the basis of the date of the tomb.
Answer: A
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