First Person: Probing for “Why?”
The arguments on which the forgery accusations rely are about to fall apart.
006
I devote this column to answering (or attempting to answer) a reader’s query. Writes Pamela Levene of Moshav Tal Shachar, Israel:
I have followed with avid interest your debate about the inscribed ivory pomegranate and whether it is a forgery. You will appreciate that I very much want the doubters to be proved wrong. However, I find myself puzzling over certain questions that I would appreciate your response to.
Why would the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) be so keen to prove the inscription a fake? Purely on a practical level, this would be tantamount to admitting that they were swindled out of an enormous sum of money. As the generosity of donors is what keeps our museums going, this would hardly be seen as encouraging future donors.
Second, on an emotional level, this pomegranate has such immense importance for so many—when the doubters are constantly trying to deny the existence of the kingdom of David and Solomon. Again why would the IAA prefer to call it a fake?
Third, even allowing for the fact that your nemesis Yuval Goren has certainly assured that his name will be known to posterity, would he really choose to be known as the man who crushed the hopes and dreams of so many if he had any doubts about the matter?
I truly hope you can prove your case. Sadly, I am afraid that you cannot.
These are good, tough questions and I am not sure I can answer them. I am not privy to the internal workings of the IAA or the thoughts and intentions of the people involved. I deal mostly with hard facts showing the IAA has not proved its allegations of forgery with convincing evidence. Much of the answer to your questions concerns the IAA’s and Yuval Goren’s intentions and state of mind; therefore what I report here is speculation (and rumor), but informed speculation nevertheless.
Your questions also require consideration not only of the ivory pomegranate inscription about which you write, which was thought to be the only relic from Solomon’s Temple,a but also the broader question of the forgery hysteria in Israel that began with the finding that the James ossuary inscription (“James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”) is a forgery.
In answer to your questions, three alternative and overlapping explanations have been suggested: (1) the IAA’s disdain for the antiquities market (these alleged forgeries all come from the antiquities market); (2) the somewhat natural antipathy of some field archaeologists toward artifacts not recovered in a professional excavation; (3) the common penchant of people trying to get out of a hole by digging themselves deeper.
(1) It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the IAA hates the antiquities market (even though the market operates legally in Israel and it is the IAA’s responsibility to regulate the dealers whom it licenses). In the IAA’s view, the antiquities market encourages looting. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether an object has been looted or comes from a collection that has been in some family for generations.
The next step in the IAA’s argument is that we can reduce (or even eliminate) looting if only we put the antiquities dealers out of business. This, however, is demonstrably 064not true. There are no licensed antiquities dealers in Egypt, Turkey or Jordan. And looting in these countries continues rampantly. Outlawing antiquities dealers only sends the market underground. The chief effect of outlawing the antiquities market is that we will never see important artifacts and we will be denied the information that even looted artifacts can impart. Looting can be stopped only by apprehension of the looters at the source.
This is a very brief summary of a complex argument on both sides. The profession itself is divided. Two leading professional societies—the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) and the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA)—will not allow papers about unprovenanced objects (objects whose legal origins cannot be demonstrated) to be presented at their scholarly meetings. They will not allow articles on unprovenanced objects to be published in their journals. On the other hand, almost all leading scholars (from the United States, Israel and Europe) who use archaeological materials in their research do rely on unprovenanced objects and publish them, contrary to the policies of ASOR and the AIA.
The IAA’s findings that many important archaeological artifacts are forgeries—beginning with the James ossuary inscription and ending with the ivory pomegranate inscription—undermines the antiquities market. That much is true. But whether that is what lies behind these allegations of forgery is another question. No one knows for sure. I am reporting what is admittedly speculation.
(2) This leads me to a second speculation. Where is the dividing line between those scholars who use unprovenanced objects in their research and those who vehemently decry even looking at them? One division, it is suggested, is between leading senior scholars who do look at and publish unprovenanced objects and younger, often untenured scholars who follow the guidelines of professional organizations whose policies forbid looking at unprovenanced artifacts. The younger scholars are, frankly, scared. Their careers may be at stake. Caution is the byword. Feelings are very strong in this area. Best not to alienate a colleague who feels passionately that unprovenanced objects are worthless and must not be used, even in part, to reach scholarly conclusions.
But some say another division of opinion is discernible—between field archaeologists, on the one hand, and scholars who don’t actually dig but do use archaeological materials in their research, on the other. Field archaeologists may spend a summer digging in the hot sun only to find a few pots and some stone walls that they try to date largely by the pottery. And then some extraordinary artifacts appear on the antiquities market. Is it any wonder that field archaeologists are deeply offended at the market? Is it any wonder that some archaeologists suggest that we should assume an artifact from the antiquities market is a forgery if it seems “too good to be true”? Is it any wonder that some archaeologists would be happy if objects on the antiquities market were shown to be forgeries?
This is not the kind of language they use, of course. Instead they emphasize that an object ripped from its context is worthless. It is certainly true that there is much more to be learned from an object that has been professionally excavated, that can be interpreted in terms of the level or stratum in which it was found and in the context of other finds. But although an unprovenanced object may be worth less, it is not worthless.
Many in the IAA are of course field archaeologists. They tend to agree with the argument that unprovenanced finds have little, if any, value. Again, the arguments are complex, and I discuss them only briefly here. But the IAA’s field archaeologists cannot be unhappy to learn that some of the antiquities market’s most highly touted objects are in fact forgeries.
(3) At this point, the reader may well ask whether either of these proclivities—hating the antiquities market and disdaining anything that does not come from a professional excavation—would explain a false charge that authentic inscriptions were forgeries.
Well, things like this happen in institutions—perhaps with no single individual’s having evil intent. Compare, for example, the false charge that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The American administration had intimations that Hussein may have had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), and the American political leaders dug deeper and deeper into the hole—until they were absolutely convinced of a demonstrable falsehood. Were these venal men? No more venal than the leaders of the IAA.
The IAA first attacked the James ossuary inscription as a forgery, based largely on a unique method for detecting forgeries developed by Professor Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University (my “nemesis” in your letter), a method that had never been used before to detect forgeries: isotope analysis. The isotope analysis of the patina-like covering on the James ossuary inscription demonstrated that it was created in modern times either to cover-up the forged characteristics of the inscription or as the result of cleaning the inscription. Yuval Goren stated as much in his first report on this new method; the word “or” is his. But he never explored this latter possibility. Moreover, the later, longer report of his team was riddled with contradictions. For example, one member of the team found that the words “brother of Jesus” may be authentic; other team members found the first part of the inscription authentic and only “brother of Jesus” to be a forgery. Goren’s isotope analysis seemingly proved the entire inscription to be a forgery.
Goren and his team have gone on to find one important artifact after another to be forgeries based largely on inferences from an isotope analysis, culminating in a finding that the inscribed ivory pomegranate is a forgery. It is telling that the IAA found the pomegranate inscription to be a forgery even before examining it—before contacting the Israel Museum where it was displayed. Museum director James Snyder learned of the IAA’s position from the press. Then the IAA called in Yuval Goren and 065convinced the Israel Museum to allow his committee to look at it. The committee’s conclusion: The inscription on the ivory pomegranate is an unequivocal forgery.
This finding regarding the ivory pomegranate inscription is likely to be the IAA’s equivalent of the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. In short, the arguments on which Yuval Goren’s team and the IAA rely are about to fall apart.
It will be interesting to watch this developing situation. For now, it is enough to say that throughout this process Yuval Goren has not publicly admitted any errors in the published reports concerning the findings of forgery—this despite the widespread criticism of other experts. More recently, Professor Goren has refused even to discuss the matter. He was scheduled to defend his findings regarding specific objects (including the James ossuary inscription and the pomegranate inscription) on November 20 at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. However, he cancelled his appearance after it had been widely publicized (much to the embarrassment of the Smithsonian) on the grounds that he cannot speak because the matter is now in court in Israel. The legal case, charging five defendants, including antiquities dealers, with forgery, is likely to take years to wend its way through the Israeli legal system. (Since there are no juries in Israel, the case will not be tried continuously but a few days at a time; the government listed 124 witnesses in the indictment and continues to add additional names.) Thus it seems that we will hear no more on the matter from Professor Goren for at least a few years.
It may well be impossible to understand fully what lies behind the IAA’s rush to denounce these inscriptions as indubitable forgeries. And, who knows, some of the inscriptions may turn out to be forgeries. For the time being, it may be best simply to await further developments. Of this much I am sure: There will be further developments.
I devote this column to answering (or attempting to answer) a reader’s query. Writes Pamela Levene of Moshav Tal Shachar, Israel:
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.
Footnotes
See André Lemaire, “Probable Head of Priestly Scepter from Solomon’s Temple Surfaces in Jerusalem,” BAR 10:01.