01x06 - Fame & Forgery?

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[FEMALE VOICE] Last time on the Naked Archaeologist.

[SIMCHA] Fakes and forgeries in the Holy Land.

The James Ossuary...

...a stone burial box with the inscription:

"James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."

If authentic, this box held the bones...

...of James, brother of Jesus of Nazareth.

It surfaced in and was called...

...the greatest archaeological find of the last century.

A direct physical link to Jesus.

And then, it was labeled the greatest forgery...

...of modern times.

Oded Golan about to go on trial...

...for the alleged forgery of the century.

These are his accusers. Yoni Pagis.

We have a forger here.

A forger of artifacts who...

...systematically sold and fabricated history.

[SIMCHA]A Jerusalem cop...

...who thinks Golan is a pathological liar.

I have investigated hundreds of people,

maybe thousands and I can tell which one is lying...

...after a very short time. And Oded Golan,

his body language right from the start tells me

"I'm lying, I'm lying, I'm lying."

[SIMCHA] And Amir Ganor.

A g*n-toting archaeologist.

He works for the Israel Antiquities Authority or IAA.

He thinks the inscription is a fake...

...and that Golan is a thief.

They claimed that they investigated a people,

that I'm heading an international Mafia,

that lot of scholars from all around the world...

...who are paleographers and epigraphers...

...and archeologists and geologists...

...and chemists and artists and dealers

-They think they are all on your pay, right?

All, everyone are all involved international conspiracy.

[SIMCHA] Golan's defenders...

...are secretly meeting in this Jerusalem greasy spoon.

Well they're not really so much defending Golan...

...as attacking his accusers...

...at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

I am convinced that the committee's findings...

...are deeply, deeply flawed.

[SIMCHA] Accusers, defenders...

...and Golan and the Ossuary.

But can't science decide what's fake?

Depends who you ask.

The IAA says isotope tests proves the inscription is fake.

The IAA's critics say the test is faulty.

Handwriting experts say a second hand...

...added, forged, the all-important brother of Jesus.

Except for those experts who say:

I think its nonsense.

I agree. It's one hand.

It's one hand whether forge or authentic...

...it is one hand.

[SIMCHA] These are the players.

Except for one, and he's dead...

...so maybe he won't mind waiting...

...just a little bit longer for an introduction.

[FEMALE VOICE] Real or fake?

So you don't want this?

I want everything. -Okay.

[SIMCHA] Archaeology works...

...by comparing one object to another.

We learn about this piece of pottery...

...by comparing it to that one.

Pieces of a puzzle.

And to get the full picture of Golan's story...

...we need to gather pieces,

compare Golan to an earlier case.

In the s...

...the Holy Land was an archaeological "Wild West."

No isotope tests, no carbon dating,

no official system for digging and protecting sites.

Everyone prospecting for the big find:

fame and fortune. Enter Moses Wilhelm Shapira.

He, he was a very strange character. He was a-

An adventurer -An adventurer.

[SIMCHA] Irit Salmon curates Jerusalem's Tico House.

A house once owned by Moses Shapira.

He betrayed his home, his religion,

his country, his wife, his profession,

his everything.

[SIMCHA] Shapria had a life of scams...

...but his most audacious...

...went all the way to the monarch.

The Queen Victoria was involved.

Queen Victoria was involved?

Yeah.

[SIMCHA] Why was Queen Victoria involved?

Shapira offered the British Museum scrolls...

...he said were an ancient copy of the book of Deuteronomy.

The price tag was so big it needed Queen Victoria's purse

And do you know how much he wanted?

Well, we're talking s...

...a few thousand dollars we're talking?

One million sterling in .

Today it is a lot of money. But then it was-

It was like a billion dollars.

-Some thing like that.

[SIMCHA] Shapira claimed...

...to have a two thousand-year-old copy...

...of a Biblical Text.

It was the James Ossuary of its day.

And like the James Ossuary,

Shapira's fake drew attention from all over the world...

...because archaeology isn't just stones and shovels.

Archaeology is politics, power, and money.

And its money, cash, dollars,

shekels that worries this group of academics...

...meeting in a Jerusalem greasy spoon.

This is amazing.

This is a Biblical archaeology food fest. It's fantastic.

[SIMCHA] The IAA says private collections ...

...like Oded Golan's are suspicious...

...because profit drives the market.

Too much money warps archaeology.

But these academics have another money theory.

Not enough money causes problems too.

The amount of funds that the IAA receives...

...from the government is very meager.

If inscriptions of this sort turn out to be authentic...

...and are sold in museums...

...for enormous amounts of money,

what's going to happen is,

that a lot of people are going to look for inscriptions..

...where inscriptions were found previously.

Now if the IAA has to protect and guard these sites...

...twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,

all the money that they receive from the government...

...is going to have to go on the protection..

...and the guarding of these sites.

Yeah. What you're saying...

...is the IAA, the Israel Antiquity Authorities...

...basically, they're security guards...

...on the way security guards protect banks,

they're supposed to protect antiquities sites.

So, just like a security company...

...that failed to protect the bank,

the best way to protect themselves...

...is to declare whatever money...

...the thieves got away with as fake money.

Somebody made it in their basement!

It wasn't the real money.

[SIMCHA] Money, politics, wait a minute,

I thought archaeology was a science.

Let's go back to the science.

Some of the first tests conducted on the Ossuary...

...were at the Royal Ontario Museum in .

Ed Keall was the curator.

I asked him if the IAA report calling the Ossuary...

...a fake had convinced him.

No, I still maintain that...

...it's conceivable that we were duped...

...by a brilliant forger.

But my position and I feel very strongly about this...

...is that the information that we were given...

...the IAA report had serious flaws in it...

...and that's because they presented it...

...without cross-examination.

And it simply wouldn't stand up in a court of law.

The forensic evidence if you like,

the isotope report that they presented...

...was seriously flawed.

[SIMCHA] The isotope test...

...looked at the inscription at the molecular level...

...to see if someone had tampered with it.

The Ossuary failed the isotope test.

But it passed many others.

It passed every other test,

including the ultraviolet test that you guys did.

We didn't spot anything suspicious.

Twice it passed the electro-microscope test.

Nothing suspicious.

No, there is nothing suspicious here.

It passed everything.

[SIMCHA] The Ossuary passed...

...the electron microscope.

It passed the ultraviolet. It failed the isotope.

But, only half the inscription failed.

Surprisingly not the half everyone suspected.

You see,

the Ossuary is valuable because it says Jesus.

So, if you're the forger...

...you'd think that would be the bit that you would forge.

The idea was that the first part of the inscription...

...is real, "James son of Joseph".

And then someone came in,

and snuck in the words "brother of Jesus."

So it was the Jesus that was fake.

So then along they come with this...

...isotope test and the very word that was...

...most in question, Jesus, passes the test.

Yeah, it passed the test.

So suddenly it's the first part now that's fake.

It was like a switcheroo.

This is the IAA Committee Report.

The women on the committee, now get this,

the end of the inscription "brother of Jesus",

appears authentic!

And that's the only part that the indictment...

...says it's a forgery.

So if you want to know why I say it's badly bungled,

that's why.

[SIMCHA] The science isn't clear.

Politics is at play.

So the question comes up:

Is the IAA prosecuting Golan...

...because they think he's a forger?

Or is it because they can't stand private collectors....

...and it's time to make an example?

[FEMALE VOICE] Real or fake?

[SIMCHA] The IAA and the police..

...say we should ignore objects found by tomb-raiders.

But what if tomb-raiders find the best stuff?

Israel Finkelstein is an archaeologist...

...at Tel Aviv University.

He thinks there's no way tomb-raiders...

...will find better things than trained academics.

We are excavating in Jerusalem...

...for a century and more, a century and a half.

Every square meter in Jerusalem has been excavated.

By professional excavators.

Professional excavations.

Big time, I mean in major excavations.

Consortiums of universities, hundreds of students.

You're saying the professionals found very little.

Found very, relatively very little.

And then you have the robbers sneaking you know,

into a site or a cave at night with candles,

two of them under the thr*at of the inspectors...

...and the police and they have two seconds to work...

...and they come with hundreds of inscriptions.

Come on. Come on.

Would you believe that?

Yeah. -Good.

You know why?

Because you painted a picture of two robbers...

...with candles with the cops on their tail.

I have a different picture.

You have organized digs that need funding,

that need volunteers, that need permits...

...that can't just dig everything up,

have to go systematically.

And then you have hundreds if not thousands of young men,

unemployed, scouring the countryside.

They don't need funding.

They don't need volunteers.

They don't need permits.

And they are following no rules.

Of course they're going to come up...

...with more stuff than the organized digs.

No. I don't agree with you.

[SIMCHA] Finkelstein's logic is this:

academics didn't find many artifacts.

The tomb-raiders did.

Finkelstein can't believe tomb-raiders would succeed...

...where academics fail.

So the tomb-raiders must be faking it.

Then, selling their fakes to antiquities shops.

I put the question to Gil Chaya...

...a Jerusalem antiquities dealer.

Chaya says bullae are best to illustrate the argument.

And bullaes are extremely, extremely difficult to fake.

Hello all you people...

...out there in game land.

Today we are going to play an exciting new game called-

[MALE VOICE] Real or fake?

Can you spot the fake? Bullae is either A.

[MALE VOICE] Or B.

Please let me up, I'll do anything you say.

Okay skipper.

Bullaes is a piece of clay it's a piece of dirt.

So find dirt into dirt, is like...

...finding a piece of hay into a haystack, not a needle.

Only Arabs could spend the time to find those bullaes.

In digs, in official digs they would never find them.

They use volunteers from universities in America,

which don't have a trained eye...

...and would never find these little things.

So you don't think she would find as good stuff...

...as the local Palestinians?

No, she would never be able to find a bullae...

...in a million year.

Illegal diggers are sometimes better than the professionals.

Much better, much better yeah.

Professor Finkelstein said to me...

...everything is fake unless proven real...

...that comes in antiquities market.

And he said how do you explain, we,

archeologist with you know all our training...

...hardly found and seals, bullae...

...or anything and all of these Palestinian youths...

...with little candles, they'd find everything.

What is expecting to find with twenty students from America...

...for two weeks every summer...

...compared to to , people...

...digging one site for seven years, day and night.

Make the calculation and that's it.

Finkelstein is wrong?

[Laughing.] Yeah, Finkelstein is wrong. Completely wrong.

Look at that stuff.

[SIMCHA] So, who finds the best stuff?

Academics or tomb-raiders?

The question matters...

...because the people who find the stuff...

...are the people who have the power to write history.

[FEMALE VOICE] Real or fake?

Look at that. There's our Ossuary.

[SIMCHA] Oded Golan and the Ossuary...

...might be grabbing headlines now,

but in it was Shapira who was in the media spotlight...

...when he claimed to have the oldest copy...

...of a Biblical Text in the world.

ancient scrolls from the book of Deuteronomy.

He offered it to Queen Victoria...

...and the British museum for a million pounds.

The whole world came here to see.

And as I said before, the whole world was...

...very interested in archeology,

in the Bible, and the Old Testament.

And so, they exhibited one of the parchments...

...to the public and the line was around the British museum.

[SIMCHA] This is how he faked it:

First, he took a scroll that was about hundred years old.

Then, he got the scissors out.

He cut the margin of the manuscript of the scrolls.

He cut it. And on them he wrote the new text.

So he had a real th century scroll.

Yes.

He cut the bottom, the empty part...

...and he says if I can just add some letters over here,

I've got it made.

I can sell it for the equivalent of a billion dollars...

...and he almost succeeded.

He almost succeeded.

[SIMCHA] But it was not to be.

[MALE VOICE] Extra, extra, read all about it.

[FEMALE VOICE] Dear Mr. Bond,

the manuscript of Deuteronomy,

which Mr.Shapira submitted to us for examination...

...is a forgery.

As the interest which it has excited is so great-

[SIMCHA] An investigation revealed the scam.

Shapira fled London.

Shapira gives us good reasons...

...to suspect private collectors and private antiquities dealers.

But we can't forget...

...some of the world's most important artifacts...

...come from private collectors.

Most of the more important items...

...were not found in official excavations.

The most important inscriptions for example...

...ever found in Israel, the Mesha Stele,

which was found in Jordan, the Dead Sea Scrolls,

they were all found in unofficial excavations.

[SIMCHA] The Dead Sea Scrolls...

...give us insight into Golan and the Ossuary.

Here's the tale: In ,

a goat wandered into a desert cave.

Its Bedouin owners followed the goat into the cave...

...where they discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This is it.

This is the place where the Dead Sea Scrolls came from.

How that goat got into this place?

I have no idea.

[SIMCHA] The Scrolls entered the private market.

Just like the James Ossuary.

For years some people called the Scrolls fakes,

just like the James Ossuary.

But now, academics recognize the Dead Sea Scrolls...

...as the world's oldest...

...and most important Biblical documents.

This is the real thing. Right?

-This is the real thing.

This is the real thing. It's incredible.

-This is the great Isaiah Scroll here.

[SIMCHA] Peter Flint,

co-director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute...

...at Trinity University in Langley, British Columbia.

There's something very good...

...about this forgery issue and all these controversies...

...because despite all the hoopla and all the noise,

I'm quite pleased because these people are saying,

hey, the ancient past, the Bible, the Scrolls,

the statues, the Ossuary's, these things matter.

[SIMCHA] But when these first appeared...

...on the private market, they were suspected as fakes.

So I asked Professor Flint about the current fakes...

...and forgeries debate surrounding Oded Golan...

...and the Ossuary.

Didn't he use an analogy...

...that would be very helpful for your question.

We all get computer bugs,

and there are very smart people...

...all around the world who try to write a bug,

or a virus that's smart enough to fool everybody....

...and sometimes they do.

And I think in the forgeries market there are some people,

who see this as a great challenge.

Can I forge an inscription that will fool the scholars?

And I think some of them are doing that.

Maybe as a game, others for money.

You don't respect those guys.

Well, I would say no,

because I think the motivation...

...is to get rich or to get glory.

-Grudgingly? Grudgingly?

Well, you know it's like a counterfeiter of money.

It's like someone who counterfeits a million dollars.

You do admire him, but he's a crook.

[SIMCHA] The crook in our tale,

Moses Shapira, fled London,

and wandered around the continent until finally,

in a Rotterdam hotel, he sh*t himself.

As for his fakes, the Scrolls, thousands of pieces of pottery.

Well, there was a twist.

Shapira's fakes started to be valued.

The IAA owns these.

-Also the department of antiquity...

...has some and also the Israel Museum has some.

There are also private archeologists...

...who have some pieces at home.

And when I had the exhibition,

even two of the stone heads were for sale...

...in one of the antiquity shops here in Jerusalem.

So they still selling this stuff.

-Yeah they are still selling it.

Today, it has a value to the fakes as well.

But it's a fake.

I know, but these are really good fakes.

Good fakes.

Or at least famous fakes.

[SIMCHA] The fake antiquity,

after enough time takes on value.

Value as curiosity, as history, as kitsch.

Archaeology can be a topsy-turvy world.

As for Golan, as he awaits his trial,

he finds his own world taking strange twists.

But this is just a Kafka situation, it's ridiculous.

-Kafka eh, you're in the world of Kafka now?

I am in the world of Kafka.

It affected my life, it affected my collection,

and it affected science after all,

and it affected the truth.

[SIMCHA] Truth? As we've just seen,

it's not just shovels and stones.

Archaeology is a world of politics, cash and envy.

Is the Ossuary fake? The Dead Sea Scrolls...

...came from the antiquities market,

and some called them fakes for years.

Now they're known as the most important...

...Biblical documents in the world.

So even after Golan's criminal trial,

the so-called archaeological trial of the century,

it's unlikely that we'll have heard the last word...