First Person: Create a Fake and Win $10,000

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BAR’s Create a Fake contest—with a $10,000 prize—will bring the controversial issue of forgery detection from the realm of theory to reality.

The occasion is one of the most explosive debates in the history of Biblical archaeology: Is the recently surfaced Jehoash Inscription authentic or a fake? World-class linguists and paleographers (experts in the development of ancient Semitic script) are absolutely confident that it is a fake. Three leading geologists with the Geological Survey of Israel who studied the patina on the inscription are just as confident that it is authentic.

Patina is a film that develops on stone (or other materials like clay or metal) over hundreds, or thousands, of years. It is often described as an encrustation or coating, or simply weathering. Can modern forgers with sophisticated techniques create patina that would get past the equally sophisticated detection methods of expert geologists?

It would be difficult to imagine a more important case study than The Jehoash Inscription. If it is authentic, it would be the first royal Israelite inscription ever discovered. Jehoash (also called Joash, Yehoash and Yoash) was king of Judah from about 835 to 801 B.C.E.

The 15-line inscription, engraved on a 9 x 11-inch black sandstone plaque, memorializes contributions of silver for repairs to Solomon’s Temple, then already more than a hundred years old. The beginning part of the plaque has not survived, and King Jehoash’s name does not actually appear. The first surviving word is “Ahaziah,” but even that is missing the first letter. Ahaziah was Jehoash’s father, so it is assumed that the missing first line reads “Jehoash son of Ahaziah.” Hence, the text has become known as The Jehoash Inscription.

The inscription closely parallels a passage in the Bible (2 Kings 12) that describes how Jehoash collected money to repair the Temple. If the inscription is authentic, it would be powerful evidence against the so-called Biblical minimalists, who deny any historicity to the Bible’s account.

The inscription is also embroiled in Middle Eastern politics. Yasser Arafat claims there never was a Solomonic Temple (or First Temple) on the Temple Mount, which the Arabs call Haram esh-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). This inscription would seem to refute that claim. But, even more explosive, if the inscription is authentic, it probably came from the illegal Arab excavation of the Temple Mount, in which the Waqf, the Muslim religious trust responsible for the site, dug with a bulldozer and dumped the debris in the adjacent Kidron Valley.^a

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The Jehoash Inscription was initially shown to Israel’s leading paleographer, Joseph Naveh, by an unidentified Arab and Jew. The owner was at one time represented by a leading Jerusalem lawyer, Isaac Herzog, who is now a member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. He has since resigned from the representation and the owner has a new lawyer. The inscription was deposited with the Israel Museum for over a year and a half while the museum’s experts studied it—inconclusively. (The museum will not discuss the matter.) It was then deposited with the Geological Survey of Israel, where three geologists (Shimon Ilani, Amnon Rosenfeld and Michael Dvorachek) studied the inscription and concluded that it is authentic. An extensive account of their work has been published in GSI Current Research (vol. 13, pp. 109–116).

One of their startling finds is that the patina on the inscription contains not only particles of carbon but also tiny globules of pure gold, averaging one micron in size (a millionth of a meter). The particles of carbon were subjected to carbon 14 analysis in a Florida laboratory, which concluded, with 95 percent certainty, that the particles dated from 400 to 200 B.C.E.

The implications of the gold globules are little short of astounding. According to the Bible (1 Kings 6:14–22), some walls of the Temple were overlaid with gold. The Temple was burned and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. If the plaque with the inscription hung in the Temple, the globules of pure gold could have gotten into the patina (that formed thereafter) from the gold that was burned during the Babylonian destruction!

Could this patina have been applied by a modern forger? Could he (or she) create this patina in a way that would fool an expert?

In the endless bull sessions in which archaeologists engage, it is often confidently asserted that it is easy to fake patina. Just bury the inscription in salt water for a while. Or bury it in the ground. Among the manuscripts we have recently received at BAR is one by Jeff Chadwick of Brigham Young University in Utah, who asserts that “sophisticated handlers of illicit antiquities in Israel…know how to make recently made oil lamps look realistic by burying them in soft, moist earth for several months, which colors the clay with earth stains and even begins the chemical reactions that eventually form patina. The same trick works with stone artifacts, except quicker” (my italics).

Even more recently, Baruch Halpern of Pennsylvania State University, who is co-director of the excavations at Megiddo, stated, “Forging patina is not a difficult thing… You could do it in a couple of hours.”

A leading petrologist from Tel Aviv University, Yuval Goren, has gone Chadwick and Halpern one better. Goren has actually created patina on a stone that is similar to the Jehoash stone and engraved with three Hebrew letters (the word for “king”). His study is published on the Web (at www.bibleinterp.com/articles/alternative_interpretation.htm); a slightly revised version will appear in the journal Tel Aviv. According to Goren, “An experienced artifact faker can sometimes fool the best experts… True patina can be created in the laboratory by various methods.”

Goren first “easily carved [his inscription] on a pre-polished surface of the rock using iron tools that leave no traces of nickel, chromium, etc.” The inscription was then “aged” by blowing fine quartz… on the surface using an airbrush system. This creates a surface that looks ‘weathered’ and ‘old’ even under the binocular stereomicroscope.”

Goren then created the patina by “crushing another fragment of the same rock in an agate mortar (to prevent contamination) and in an ultrasonic bath (to disaggregate the stone), then producing a watery solution of the powder… The pasty solution of the ground rock is used for carefully coating the entire surface, including the inscription, and then let dry. Due to the clay contents, it can be hardened to some extent by gradual heating in an electric kiln… The ‘patina’ may be ‘aged’ even more by exposing it to microwaves which would result in the appearance of minute cracks and grooves within it.” Gold traces can be “sprayed over the tablet using a gas burner. This will create micron-sized globules that will not be seen by the naked eye. Another possible way to fool the scientists would be to ‘plant’ in the cracks and the grooves Iron Age II charcoal from an archaeological site, which can be easily obtained in any Near Eastern department of archaeology.”

Voilà! This then would produce, according to Goren, “exactly the same analytical results” as were obtained by the geologists at Israel’s Geological Survey.

However, a scientist at the Geological Survey told me that if a student of Goren’s had turned in this paper to the professor, the student would have received an F.

Another problem: Goren says that he could detect the result as a forgery if we assume, as appears to be the case with The Jehoash Inscription, that it was buried somewhere in Jerusalem. Neither the patina Goren created—nor the patina on The Jehoash Inscription—contains any elements from a Jerusalem “depositional environment.” The Jehoash Inscription and the fake Goren created contain only chemical elements found in the stone. For Goren, this makes it “unlikely” that The Jehoash Inscription is genuine. Moreover, Goren says that there is another way he could tell a forgery (and specifically whether The Jehoash Inscription is a forgery) by a proper examination. This would involve examination of a minute cross-section (so small it is “almost invisible to the naked eye”) of the patina on The Jehoash Inscription to determine its “microlaminar structure.”

Another interesting situation: The Getty Museum in Los Angeles purchased a now-famous Greek statue of a young man, 068known as the Getty Kouros, in 1984. It reportedly paid approximately $8 million. Today that would be the equivalent of $25 million or more. A debate still rages as to whether it is a fake. Many attempts were made to try to determine the issue scientifically. Among other things, the Getty scientists tried to fake the patina on the marble statue. They succeeded in doing this—as far as the naked eye could tell. What they created was visually just like real patina. But they could not reproduce the microstructure!¹ The faked patina was detectible.

That’s what we know at the present time. And that provides the context for our contest. We hope Professor Goren and Professor Chadwick will both enter, along with many others. Be sure to consult the contest rules in “Fool The Experts.”

Incidentally, The Jehoash Inscription is now in the hands of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who will appoint two committees of experts to study it, one of Biblical and epigraphical scholars and the other of geological scientists. The mysterious inscription was located after a two-month police search. It was turned over to the police by Oded Golan, the same collector who owns the famous bone box (or ossuary) inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”^b However, Golan denies that he is the owner of The Jehoash Inscription. By the time this appears in print, we may know who is.

One other similarity between the two inscriptions: The Jehoash Inscription was wrapped in bubble wrap for its trip from Tel Aviv to the Jerusalem office of the Israel Antiquities Authority. On the way, it broke in two, along a previously existing crack-line. Readers will remember that the James ossuary also broke, on its flight from Tel Aviv to Toronto—while it was protected only by layers of bubble wrap.

One important difference between The Jehoash Inscription and the James ossuary inscription is that leading paleographers and Biblical scholars are confident The Jehoash Inscription is a forgery, while all experienced paleographers specializing in the Second Temple period who have opined on the issue find no reason to doubt the authenticity of the James ossuary on paleographical grounds. However, the issues regarding the patina are almost the same on both The Jehoash Inscription and the James ossuary.

BAR’s Create a Fake contest—with a $10,000 prize—will bring the controversial issue of forgery detection from the realm of theory to reality.