A biblical bazaar
Treasures, trinkets, and fakes mingle in Israel's controversial antiquities market
While Israeli scientists continue to analyze the two contested artifacts, some prominent archaeologists already are suggesting that both should be dismissed out of hand because of their murky provenance. "If we have questions about certain antiquities found in a dig," says Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar, "then we have that many more doubts about items like these." Because the lucrative market provides a strong incentive for forgers and looters, she says, scholars should simply ignore antiquities not excavated from archaeological digs.
Shanks, whose magazine first broke the story of the James ossuary, says he abhors looters and concedes that the market is glutted with forgeries. But, he adds, "this does not mean that we should ignore everything that comes from the antiquities market." He notes that most of the Dead Sea Scrolls, widely considered to be the most significant archaeological discovery of the 20th century, "were looted and purchased from middlemen. Yet no one today suggests that the scrolls are modern forgeries."
Past perfect. But clever fakes have deceived experts. Perhaps the most notorious incident occurred more than a century ago after the discovery of a ninth- century B.C. Moabite tablet that loosely parallels events in the Bible's 2 Kings. Within a few years, the antiquities market became flooded with fake Moabite inscriptions. The most prolific forger was a collector and dealer named Moshe Shapira, a Polish-born Jew who came to Palestine in 1855 and eventually converted to Christianity. Shapira sold some 1,700 "Moabite" inscriptions to the Berlin Museum, all manufactured by his team of workers. When his deceptions were exposed, Shapira committed suicide in 1884.
Archaeologists and curators have become more adept at ferreting out phonies. But an occasional ringer still slips through. In the 1980s, an acclaimed epigrapher, Nahman Avigad of the Hebrew University, published a series of articles analyzing a set of seals he believed were from the First Temple period. The artifacts later were found to be fakes.
Professional forgers, says Mazar of Hebrew University, do "thorough academic research and use the latest laboratory techniques" to confound experts. "We're talking about people who will hold on to a forgery for 15 years before they put it on the market. It's going to give them millions of dollars in the future so they can afford to invest time and effort."
More troubling than forgery, experts say, is the illicit trade in genuine antiquities plundered from thousands of unguarded archaeological sites throughout Israel and the West Bank. Cases of illegal digging and tomb-robbing, normally in the hundreds each year, have multiplied since the start of the intifada in 2000. High unemployment and a breakdown of law in the Palestinian territories have emboldened looters, who have little trouble finding buyers for pilfered goods.
Attempts by the Israeli government to crack down on the illegal traffic have proved controversial, and, some contend, of questionable effect. Under a 1978 law, all archaeological finds after that date are considered property of the government. Yet antiquity dealers are still permitted to sell artifacts discovered before 1978. (Golan says both the James ossuary and the Jehoash tablet were purchased before then, although Israeli authorities have doubts.) Critics of the policy say it has done little to stem the pillaging of archaeological sites and may have actually heightened demand for smuggled artifacts. "The best of the antiquities simply end up overseas," says Golan. Israel's historical treasures would be better protected, he says, if private citizens were permitted to keep recently discovered artifacts "as long as they were shown to scientists and documented."
Restricting the antiquities trade is all the more difficult because of the fascination these artifacts exert. Whether the James box and the Jehoash tablet are authentic or clever forgeries, says historian Neil Asher Silberman, director of the Ename Center for Public Archaeology in Belgium, the two objects "have been irreversibly transformed into relics" imbued with religious significance that rests "not in what they are but in what they symbolize." That kind of impulse is unlikely to subside any time soon.
With Leora Eren Frucht
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