3 ms·

Lots of question marks: How do we know what's a forgery and what's not? Did someone take authentic originals and write additional text over them? Where do these

Lots of question marks: How do we know what's a forgery and what's not? Did someone take authentic originals and write additional text over them? Where do these forgeries come from? How are all of these fragments not in one place under guard? How are forgeries of this even possible? I need more context to understand.

tasty_freeze 4y ago
The article mentions some of them, but obviously this is an article for popular consumption and doesn't convey many details. One mentioned was that the way script was written has changed over the centuries, and some documents contained some letters that are of an epoch different than the rest of them, or letters have been modified or new letters squeezed into gaps. Other techniques might include being able to use spectography to identify that the suspect letters were written using ink of a different composition. If you need more context, this one article that is mostly a personality profile won't contain it. But there are hundreds of books and thousands of research papers written about the dead sea scrolls.
runesofdoom 4y ago
I am not an archeologist, but to provide some relevant context to your later questions, there are at least thousands of Dead Sea Scroll fragments, located and taken by many different parties, from many different locations, over the course of a decade or more in the mid-20th Century.
- ogogmad 4y ago
  So they weren't all found in the same cave. Surely, if they were, they would still all be in one place. What definition do we have for Dead Sea Scrolls? Is it any old papyrus scroll from circa 2000 years ago that's near the Dead Sea? Or does it have a more specific meaning?
pessimizer 4y ago
You can't find that information in the article? It's very long and detailed.
AlotOfReading 4y ago
There's a concept called "provenance" which is basically "how sure are we that it's authentic". What work like this is doing is comparing scrolls with uncertain provenance to items of very secure provenance like known fragments from the original excavations. You can find forgeries everywhere in the antiquities trade. Some of them are modern productions, but many (see all pieces of the true cross in churches around the world) are old enough to be historical artifacts in their own right. One of the things that makes it difficult to know if objects of uncertain provenance are legitimate is that it's very common for locals to find materials missed / never seen by archaeologists or to simply loot from excavations in-progress. The dead sea scrolls were found over decades by many different groups, so they're particularly susceptible to this. Forgers take advantage of that. Good forgeries can fool even scrupulous buyers and are mainly given away by things like incorrect radiocarbon dates or the forger's unfamiliarity with the details of the source material like the article.
- wl 4y ago
  Not quite. Provenance is the story of how an object came from the ground to wherever it is now. The question of authentication is larger than provenance. If there's good documentation showing the object originally came from an archeological excavation, that's a point towards authenticity. If the alleged provenance starts with an unnamed antiquities dealer by way of an anonymous Swiss collector, that doesn't help one way or another with the authenticity question.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    You're strictly correct, but I made some simplifications that I think are appropriate and avoid the whole semantic mess of what "authenticity" means. Secure provenance is usually a sufficient condition to establish authenticity for archaeologists anyway.
    - wl 4y ago
      The problem with that oversimplification is that provenance is much bigger than authentication and authentication is much bigger than provenance. Sure, some of the work overlaps, but they're distinct. When provenance research shows up in the media, it's usually in the form of identifying looted material culture and repatriating it. There's also the issue of objects that are almost certainly authentic and legally exported, but the provenance doesn't go back to the archeological context ("provenience" [sic]) and that lack of provenance limits the archeological value of these objects.
baud147258 4y ago
on the matter of forgery of ancien pieces, I like this article: https://antigonejournal.com/2022/11/sponsian-fake-emperor/ https://antigonejournal.com/2022/11/sponsian-fake-emperor/ on Roman-era coins. It goes into details on a few ways coin forgeries are made and how they might be identified
Archelaos 4y ago
> Did someone take authentic originals and write additional text over them? There are all kinds of materials used for forgeries. Ranging from cheap ones sold to tourist on contemporary papyros (or even banana leaves) made contemporary ink to highly sophisticated ones on original Ancient papyros (you either remove the old handwriting of a not so "valuable" text or use blank Ancient papyros). > How are all of these fragments not in one place under guard? Just an anecdote: I once visited a papyrological institute at the university I studied with a group of fellow students to receive an introduction into papyrology. All the tables in the seminar room were pushed together and on them lay a lot of papyros fragments, each fixed between two sealed panes of plastic. Among them were also the highlights of the collection: A small fragment from Qumran and a Septuaginta fragment from the 7th century. Everyone was allowed to take these sealed plastic storage frames (I don't know the professional term for it) into her or his hand and have a close look at it from both sides.

tasty_freeze 4y ago

The article mentions some of them, but obviously this is an article for popular consumption and doesn't convey many details. One mentioned was that the way script was written has changed over the centuries, and some documents contained some letters that are of an epoch different than the rest of them, or letters have been modified or new letters squeezed into gaps. Other techniques might include being able to use spectography to identify that the suspect letters were written using ink of a different composition. If you need more context, this one article that is mostly a personality profile won't contain it. But there are hundreds of books and thousands of research papers written about the dead sea scrolls.

runesofdoom 4y ago

I am not an archeologist, but to provide some relevant context to your later questions, there are at least thousands of Dead Sea Scroll fragments, located and taken by many different parties, from many different locations, over the course of a decade or more in the mid-20th Century.

ogogmad 4y ago
So they weren't all found in the same cave. Surely, if they were, they would still all be in one place. What definition do we have for Dead Sea Scrolls? Is it any old papyrus scroll from circa 2000 years ago that's near the Dead Sea? Or does it have a more specific meaning?

pessimizer 4y ago

You can't find that information in the article? It's very long and detailed.

AlotOfReading 4y ago

There's a concept called "provenance" which is basically "how sure are we that it's authentic". What work like this is doing is comparing scrolls with uncertain provenance to items of very secure provenance like known fragments from the original excavations. You can find forgeries everywhere in the antiquities trade. Some of them are modern productions, but many (see all pieces of the true cross in churches around the world) are old enough to be historical artifacts in their own right. One of the things that makes it difficult to know if objects of uncertain provenance are legitimate is that it's very common for locals to find materials missed / never seen by archaeologists or to simply loot from excavations in-progress. The dead sea scrolls were found over decades by many different groups, so they're particularly susceptible to this. Forgers take advantage of that. Good forgeries can fool even scrupulous buyers and are mainly given away by things like incorrect radiocarbon dates or the forger's unfamiliarity with the details of the source material like the article.

wl 4y ago
Not quite. Provenance is the story of how an object came from the ground to wherever it is now. The question of authentication is larger than provenance. If there's good documentation showing the object originally came from an archeological excavation, that's a point towards authenticity. If the alleged provenance starts with an unnamed antiquities dealer by way of an anonymous Swiss collector, that doesn't help one way or another with the authenticity question.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  You're strictly correct, but I made some simplifications that I think are appropriate and avoid the whole semantic mess of what "authenticity" means. Secure provenance is usually a sufficient condition to establish authenticity for archaeologists anyway.
  - wl 4y ago
    The problem with that oversimplification is that provenance is much bigger than authentication and authentication is much bigger than provenance. Sure, some of the work overlaps, but they're distinct. When provenance research shows up in the media, it's usually in the form of identifying looted material culture and repatriating it. There's also the issue of objects that are almost certainly authentic and legally exported, but the provenance doesn't go back to the archeological context ("provenience" [sic]) and that lack of provenance limits the archeological value of these objects.

baud147258 4y ago

on the matter of forgery of ancien pieces, I like this article: https://antigonejournal.com/2022/11/sponsian-fake-emperor/ https://antigonejournal.com/2022/11/sponsian-fake-emperor/ on Roman-era coins. It goes into details on a few ways coin forgeries are made and how they might be identified

Archelaos 4y ago

> Did someone take authentic originals and write additional text over them? There are all kinds of materials used for forgeries. Ranging from cheap ones sold to tourist on contemporary papyros (or even banana leaves) made contemporary ink to highly sophisticated ones on original Ancient papyros (you either remove the old handwriting of a not so "valuable" text or use blank Ancient papyros). > How are all of these fragments not in one place under guard? Just an anecdote: I once visited a papyrological institute at the university I studied with a group of fellow students to receive an introduction into papyrology. All the tables in the seminar room were pushed together and on them lay a lot of papyros fragments, each fixed between two sealed panes of plastic. Among them were also the highlights of the collection: A small fragment from Qumran and a Septuaginta fragment from the 7th century. Everyone was allowed to take these sealed plastic storage frames (I don't know the professional term for it) into her or his hand and have a close look at it from both sides.