10 archaeological artifacts sold for millions and turned out to be fakes

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

"Things are not what they seem," says a well-known parable. But either people sometimes forget this truth, or the scammers turn out to be very convincing. One way or another, history knows cases when unique archaeological artifacts turned out to be pure fakes.

1. The Fijian Little Mermaid (1842)

In July 1842, Dr. J. Griffin, a member of the British Lyceum of Natural History, brought a supposedly real mermaid to New York, which was caught near Fiji in the South Pacific. The mermaid was put on public display at the Broadway concert hall, where she enjoyed immense popularity.

In fact, the audience was deceived twice. First, Dr. Griffin was a common con man, and there was no such thing as the British High School of Natural History. Secondly, the mermaid was made from half of the monkey (torso and head), which were sewn to the back half of the fish, and then covered with papier-mâché. An effigy of a fake mermaid perished in a fire at the Boston Kimball Museum.

2. Piltdown chicken (1999)

On October 15, 1999, the National Geographic Society held a press conference to announce an amazing find - a fossil that was more than 125 million years old. A fossil found in northeastern China called "Archaeoraptor liaoningensis" was supposed to be a welcome missing link between dinosaurs and birds.

After a while, Xu Xing, the Chinese scientist who originally helped identify the fossil, found a second fossil that was exactly the same as the tail of the Archaeoraptor, but had the body of a different fossil. After careful research, Sin came to the conclusion that the fake "Archaeoraptor" consisted of 2 parts - the lower part belonged to a dromaeosaurid, now known as a microraptor, and the upper part was taken from the fossil bird Janormis.

3. The Piltdown Man (1912)

In early 1912, enthusiastic archaeologist Charles Dawson and Museum of Natural History geologist Arthur Smith Woodward found "evidence for an evolutionary missing link between apes and humans." During excavations in Piltdown (England), fragments of a human skull were found with a large cranial volume (indicating a developed brain), as well as an ape-like jaw, but with human teeth. According to the researchers, the age of primitive man is about 500,000 years. However, 30 years later, additional studies were carried out, during which it turned out that the skull is only 5,000 years old, and the jaw belongs to an orangutan. The teeth were specially filed to resemble human teeth.

4. Ancient Persian princess (2000)

This mummy was allegedly found after an earthquake near the Pakistani city of Quetta. It was alleged that the "Persian princess" was put up for sale on the black antique market for 600 million Pakistani rupees, the equivalent of $ 6 million.

The story began in November 2000, when the international press reported a stunning find: a mummy of an ancient Persian princess over 2,600 years old. The mummy was enclosed in a carved stone coffin inside a wooden sarcophagus, wearing a golden crown and mask. All internal organs were removed from the body in the same way as the ancient Egyptians mummified the dead. The body wrapped in cloth was literally strewn with golden artifacts, and on the chest there was a gold plate with the inscription "I am the daughter of the great king Xerxes, I am Rodugun."

Archaeologists have suggested that it was an Egyptian princess who was married to a Persian prince, or the daughter of Cyrus the Great from the Achaemenid dynasty in Persia. However, mummies have never been found in Persia before. When the curator of the National Museum of Karachi, Dr. Asma Ibrahim, began researching the mummy, mysterious facts emerged. There were grammatical errors in the inscription on the tablet, and also some mandatory operations used in mummification among the Egyptians were omitted.

Moreover, computed tomography and X-rays showed that this was not an ancient corpse at all, but a woman who died very recently, and her neck was broken. An autopsy confirmed that the young woman may indeed have been killed in order to provide the fraudsters with a body for mummification and subsequent sale for several million dollars.

5. Golden Tiara Saitaferna: "Forgery, purchased for 200,000 French gold francs (1896)

On April 1, 1896, the Louvre announced the acquisition of a gold diadem for 200,000 gold French francs, which belonged to the Scythian king Saitafern. According to experts in the Louvre, the Greek inscription on the tiara confirmed the fact that the tiara was made in the III-II century BC. But shortly thereafter, a number of experts expressed their doubts about the authenticity of the tiara.

German archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler noticed stylistic inconsistencies in the design of the tiara, as well as the lack of signs of aging on the item. Eventually, this news reached Odessa. In 1903, a jeweler Rukhomovsky from a small town near Odessa told researchers from the Louvre that he had made this tiara for a certain Mr. Hochmann, who gave him books with images of Greco-Scythian artifacts on which his work was based. The tiara was supposed to be a "gift for an archaeologist's friend."

6. Calvary of the Basques in Irunja Velea

Veleia was a Roman city in Spain, which is currently in the Basque Country (Spain). In 2006, a series of finds were announced that allegedly found the first evidence of written Basque. Also announced was the find of pottery, on which were found Egyptian hieroglyphs and an artifact that was "the earliest representation of Calvary."

The Basque Calvary was a ceramic fragment about 10 cm in size, which depicted the scene of the crucifixion on Calvary, as well as two figures who were considered the Mother of God and St. John. But in the end, a strange inaccuracy was noticed on the image - on the top of the cross of Christ there was an inscription RIP (rest in peace), while the original there should have been an inscription INRI. In 2008, the finds were declared fake.

7. Mummy from Mississippi (1920)

In the 1920s, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History acquired a large collection of Native American artifacts from Colonel Brevoort Butler's nephew. Among these artifacts was an Egyptian mummy. For decades, the mummy was a local attraction, until in 1969 a medical student, Gentry Yeatman, with a passion for archeology, decided to study the mummy. Radiological examination revealed that the mummy consisted of animal ribs nailed to a wooden frame with square nails. It was all covered in papier-mâché.

8. The Shapir Scrolls (1883)

In 1883, William Moses Shapira, a Jerusalem antique dealer, presented what is now known as the "Shapira Scrolls". They were allegedly fragments of an ancient parchment found in the Dead Sea area. Shapira wanted to sell them to the British Museum for a million pounds ($ 1.6 million). Shapira also made numerous fake artifacts (allegedly found in Moab), including clay figurines, large human heads, and clay vessels with inscriptions copied from the real Moabite ancient stone "Stela Mesha".

In 1873, the Museum of Antiquities from Berlin bought 1,700 exhibits for 22,000 thalers. Other private collectors followed suit. However, various people, including a French scientist and diplomat named Charles Clermont-Ganneau, had doubts. As a result, the scrolls and figurines were submitted for a thorough examination, after which they were found to be fake.

9. Etruscan Terracotta Warriors (1915 - 1921

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Etruscan Terracotta Warriors are three statues of ancient Etruscans that were purchased by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art between 1915 and 1921. They were created by Italian crooks - brothers Pio and Alfonso Riccardi, as well as three of their six sons.

The three warrior statues were first exhibited together in 1933, and in the following years, various art historians have voiced their suspicions that the statues might be fake. In 1960, chemical tests of the coating on statues revealed the presence of manganese, an ingredient the Etruscans had never used. After that, the story of the making of the statues by the Italians was revealed.

10. Discovery of Shinichi Fujimura (2000)

In 1972, Shinichi Fujimura began studying archeology and searching for artifacts from the Paleolithic era. He met several archaeologists in Sendai and they founded the Sekki Bunka Kenkyukai Society. In 1975, this organization discovered many stone artifacts from the Paleolithic era in Miyagi Prefecture. It has been claimed that these stone tools are about 50,000 years old.

Following this success, he participated in 180 archaeological excavations in northern Japan, and almost always found artifacts that were getting older. Based on Fujimura's discoveries, the history of the Japanese Paleolithic was extended by almost 30,000 years.

On October 23, 2000, Fujimura and his team announced another discovery at the Kamitakamori excavation site. The finds are estimated to be 570,000 years old. On November 5, 2000, photographs were published in the press of Fujimura digging holes and burying artifacts that his team later found. The Japanese admitted to his forgeries.

Search legendary artifacts from myths of different countries, scientists do not stop today, and I want to believe that someone will definitely get lucky.