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Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) director Shuka Dorfman testified in “the forgery trial of the century,” now in its fifth year in a Jerusalem court, that both André Lemaire, a world-renowned paleographer who teaches at the Sorbonne, and Ada Yardeni, one of Israel’s leading experts in Semitic script, had been under suspicion by the IAA as being members of an international forgery conspiracy.
Dorfman’s testimony was given on September 8, 2009, and reported in The Jerusalem Post by Matthew Kalman, the only journalist regularly attending the trial.
The basis for the suspicion attaching to Lemaire was apparently that he published the first announcement of the now-famous James Ossuary inscription in an article in BAR. Yardeni was suspected of being part of the forgery conspiracy because she judged the inscription on the ossuary, or bone box, referring to James as the “brother of Jesus,” to be authentic.
The prosecution had refused to call Dorfman as a witness, so the judge permitted the defense to call and cross-examine him.
The Jerusalem Post article identified the prosecution’s star witness as Israel’s largest collector of Biblically related artifacts, Shlomo Moussaieff, who was supposedly duped into paying huge sums for allegedly fake items. Moussaieff had testified that on numerous occasions he bought meals for Dorfman; on one occasion, Dorfman sought Moussaieff’s help in finding a job. Dorfman denied Moussaieff’s testimony. “He [Moussaieff] is not telling the truth, plain and simple,” Dorfman testified.
The trial is expected to conclude before the end of the year.
Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) director Shuka Dorfman testified in “the forgery trial of the century,” now in its fifth year in a Jerusalem court, that both André Lemaire, a world-renowned paleographer who teaches at the Sorbonne, and Ada Yardeni, one of Israel’s leading experts in Semitic script, had been under suspicion by the IAA as being members of an international forgery conspiracy. Dorfman’s testimony was given on September 8, 2009, and reported in The Jerusalem Post by Matthew Kalman, the only journalist regularly attending the trial. The basis for the suspicion attaching to Lemaire was apparently that he published […]
