There are many reasons why you shouldn’t collect antiquities. One of them is that you may end up with a forgery. There are plenty of clever forgers out there who would love to take your money. Even scholars are sometimes tricked by their fraudulent handiwork. Often there is no foolproof way of distinguishing between a forgery and the real thing.
Recently we were faced with making a decision of our own related to this problem. Not that we collect. We wouldn’t touch the stuff. In our case, the issue was whether or not we should print something. The object in question was a seal. If authentic, it was an awesome piece. We already had an article ready to publish when we talked to two more scholars. They had their doubts about the seal’s authenticity. We all conferred, and everyone agreed that we should pull the article. So we did. There were too many suspicious signs.
I can’t help wondering what will happen to that seal. Will someone purchase it without knowing of these grave scholarly doubts? Caveat emptor!
On other occasions, however, when the evidence of authenticity has been strong, we have published unprovenanced pieces even though some scholars have expressed doubts. One such instance was an ostracon (an inscribed potsherd) with a receipt for a three-shekel donation to the Jerusalem Temple; if authentic, the inscription dates to the late eighth or seventh century B.C., in the view of leading paleographers.1 The authenticity of this ostracon (and another ostracon in the same hand that we published with it) was defended not only in this magazine (citing a half dozen scholars who opined on the authenticity of the piece), but also in refereed scholarly journals. Among those scholars who vouched for it were the three authors of the French-language editio princeps,2 which appeared in the scholarly journal Semitica: Dennis Pardee of the University of Chicago, Pierre Boudreuil of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and Felice Israel of the University of Genoa.
Recently, however, two Israeli scholars—historian Israel Eph‘al and epigraphist Joseph Naveh—have published their doubts about both ostraca.3 If they are correct, then there must be an extremely knowledgeable and talented scholar out there who is manufacturing forgeries.
The basis of the doubts Eph‘al and Naveh express about these ostraca is not primarily paleographic (relating to the shape and form of the letters), but linguistic. Eph‘al and Naveh note that the ostraca texts include many parallels with phrases in books of the Bible, including Deuteronomy, Psalms, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. These Biblical parallels are close, but not identical. Even more striking are the parallels to phrases in several archaeologically recovered inscriptions dating to the same period as the ostraca.4 These passages, the authors tell us, are “almost identical.” The similarity and frequency of parallel passages (both Biblical and extra-Biblical), Eph‘al and Naveh write, “can hardly be described as accidental.”
If Naveh and Eph‘al are right, then whoever forged these ostraca must have had an extensive and abstruse knowledge of the Bible 059and of recent archaeological finds. The forger also had to be capable of imitating almost perfectly5 the paleo-Hebrew script from contemporaneous potsherds.
The number of scholars today who have such a varied and deep understanding of the Bible, archaeology and paleography can be counted on the fingers of one hand (or both hands, at most). Perhaps a gang of scholars, each contributing a particular skill to the enterprise, would also be capable of demonstrating such skill and learning.
Although Eph‘al and Naveh see the obscure parallels as evidence of forgery, since the publication of their article others have argued that the parallels only serve to confirm the authenticity of the ostracon.
But the published doubts of scholars as eminent as Eph‘al and Naveh can never be erased. These ostraca now have a permanent question mark attached to them. It is interesting how it is done—not by an assertion that they are forgeries, but by indirect statements, by what in Greek rhetoric is called litotes. Eph‘al and Naveh’s article is reminiscent of Antony’s speech at Caesar’s funeral: “Brutus is an honorable man; so are they all [like the publishers of the three-shekel ostracon], all honorable men … Brutus says he [Caesar] was ambitious, and Brutus is an honorable man … I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke … If I were dispos’d to stir your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong, who, you all know, are honorable men … They that have done this deed are honorable.”6 In this same vein, Eph‘al and Naveh specifically deny that they are saying that the ostraca whose authenticity was vouched for by their three distinguished colleagues are forgeries: “The present writers [say Eph‘al and Naveh, referring to themselves] do not claim that the ostraca have been recently fabricated, because they believe that such an accusation should not be leveled unless it can be proven beyond any doubt.” Then they heap one doubt after another, characterizing their doubts simply as hesitations: “Although these remarks cannot be taken as definite proof, the accumulation of the above-mentioned features leads us to make known our hesitations regarding the authenticity of the ostraca.”
Naveh is fond of this kind of understatement. In the preface to the late Nahman Avigad’s recently published Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals, Naveh very obliquely plants a seed of doubt on 49 specific seals in the corpus, noting only that “there were rumours among scholars concerning their authenticity,” and adding that “Avigad was confident that they were genuine.”7 Interested in purchasing one of these after one of Israel’s most prominent paleographers has given them the kiss of death?
So my advice is, don’t collect. Stay out of the antiquities market. It is the rare collector who will deny that he has purchased some forgeries. And doubts may arise long after the purchase. Naveh may well be right about the inscriptions he hesitantly suggests may be forgeries. In several other cases in the past, he has definitively unmasked forgeries by demonstrating just how the forger created his forgery.8 Even when he cannot prove it, however, he has a good sense of these things.
That you may end up with a forgery is just one of many good reasons to refrain from collecting antiquities. Stay out of the market!
There are many reasons why you shouldn’t collect antiquities. One of them is that you may end up with a forgery. There are plenty of clever forgers out there who would love to take your money. Even scholars are sometimes tricked by their fraudulent handiwork. Often there is no foolproof way of distinguishing between a forgery and the real thing. Recently we were faced with making a decision of our own related to this problem. Not that we collect. We wouldn’t touch the stuff. In our case, the issue was whether or not we should print something. The object […]
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Pierre Boudreuil, Felice Israel and Dennis Pardee, “Deux Ostraca Paleo-Hebreux de la Collection Sh. Moussaieff,” Semitica 46 (1997), p. 49; and “King’s Command and Widow’s Plea,” Biblical Archaeologist 61:1 (March 1998), p. 2.
3.
Israel Eph‘al and Joseph Naveh, “Remarks on the Recently Published Moussaieff Ostraca,” Israel Exploration Journal 48 (1998), p. 269.
4.
One of the almost identical inscriptions (from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud) was published only in 1992, after the forgery—if it is a forgery—was thought to have been made, so a question arose as to how the forger could have known about it. Eph‘al and Naveh note, however, that Ze’ev Meshel, who published the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscription in 1992, gave numerous public lectures on this reading about ten years before he published it, and a forger of the three-shekel ostracon could have learned about it this way. If so, this only emphasizes how well informed the forger was.
5.
Eph‘al and Naveh question the shape of some of the letters. Eph‘al and Naveh are critical of the scholars who originally published the three-shekel ostracon because they “analysed the script in a facile way.”
6.
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act 3, scene 2.
7.
Joseph Naveh in the preface to Nahman Avigad, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Israel Exploration Society, Hebrew Univ. Institute of Archaeology, 1997), p. 12.
8.
Instances are cited in the article by Eph‘al and Naveh.
