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Pulsa este icono si opinas que la información está fuera de lugar, no tiene rigor o es de nulo interés.
Tu único clic no la borarrá, pero contribuirá a que la sabiduría del grupo pueda funcionar correctamente.

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1. 

   #1 Lykonius 05 de jul. 2007

   El Iruña-Veleia IV está a puntito de petar... y si incluía esto...:

   
   http://www.davidrowan.com/2005/05/is-oded-golan-behind-biblical.html

   In October 2002, the competitive world of biblical archaeology was
   rocked by the discovery of the James Ossuary, a burial box said to have
   contained the remains of Jesus's brother. But doubts about its
   authenticity have led to an unholy spat, which finally goes to court
   next week in Jerusalem. DAVID ROWAN reports from Israel

   
   The
   small limestone vessel is either the first physical evidence that Jesus
   of Nazareth existed, or the most elaborate fraud perpetrated in modern
   biblical archaeology. Next week, a Jerusalem court will begin to
   consider how a 20 x 11 in burial box came to bear the sensational
   inscription 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus' - not only proof,
   its owner claims, that Jesus lived, but a definitive answer to the
   theological debate as to whether Mary gave him a brother. But while the
   owner, a 53-year-old Tel Aviv antiquities collector named Oded Golan,
   continues to insist furiously that 'the whole inscription is
   authentic', Israel's state-controlled antiquities body is this week
   finalising a rather more damning interpretation. After a two-year
   investigation, which drew in more than 100 witnesses, it accuses Golan
   of faking the inscription as head of a forgery ring that has deceived
   the world's collectors and museums for the past two decades.The ring's
   legacy, the prosecution claims, is one of the greatest ever treasure
   troves of fraudulent biblical artifacts, which has tarnished
   archaeological science, given false hope to the faithful, and belatedly
   raised questions about the collections of some of the world's leading
   museums, including the British Museum.

   
   The story begins on
   October 21, 2002, when Hershel Shanks, publisher of the glossy and
   often polemical Biblical Archaeology Review, held a dramatic press
   conference in Washington DC. A 2,000-year-old bone box, or ossuary, had
   come to light, Shanks announced, which had implications 'not just for
   scholarship, but for the world's understanding of the Bible'.

   
   André
   Lemaire, a leading specialist in Semitic inscriptions at the Sorbonne
   in Paris, had spotted it by chance a few months earlier, while visiting
   an Israeli collector's home in Tel Aviv. On examining the Aramaic
   engraving on the box - 'Yaakov bar Yoseph, Achui de Yeshua', or 'Yaakov
   son of Joseph, brother of Yeshua' - Lemaire could barely contain his
   excitement. 'It seems very probable that this is the ossuary of the
   James in the New Testament,' he concluded in the Biblical Archaeology
   Review. 'If so, this would mean that we have here the first epigraphic
   mention - from about 63AD - of Jesus of Nazareth.'

   
   The owner's
   identity remained secret at this stage. Shanks disclosed only that the
   man had paid an Arab a few hundred dollars for the ossuary some years
   earlier, after it had been looted from a Jerusalem cave, but had failed
   to appreciate its significance. Shanks and Lemaire had shown the
   inscription to Ada Yardeni, a leading Israeli epigrapher, who had
   pronounced it authentic and dated the script to the first century AD.
   Shanks also approached the Geological Survey of Israel to examine the
   box 'scientifically'. Its laboratories studied the stone, the dirt
   clinging to its sides, and more importantly the patina (the surface
   residue that had built up over the centuries). The limestone, the
   scientists declared, was typical of that quarried in biblical
   Jerusalem. There was no evidence that modern tools had been applied,
   nor, indeed, anything 'that might detract from the authenticity' of the
   inscription and the patina.

   
   There remained a debate as to
   whether James - the first Bishop of Jerusalem - was the literal brother
   of Jesus, and a tiny chance that the Jesus, James and Joseph in
   question were just ordinary Jerusalemites with popular contemporary
   names. Yet the implications of Shanks's announcement were unambiguous
   enough to make headlines across the world. As Shanks, now 75, explained
   breathlessly in a subsequent book, The Brother of Jesus, 'the evidence
   for the inscription's authenticity is compelling ... [This] may be the
   most astonishing find in the history of archaeology.'

   
   The Royal
   Ontario Museum in Toronto was first to display the artifact, in
   November 2002. Just hours before it was due to be unveiled to the
   media, the museum admitted that the ossuary had been seriously damaged
   in transit, creating cracks that would require its conservators'
   closest attention. Yet the drama was only just beginning. Even as the
   James Ossuary, as it was being called, was undergoing repair, troubling
   questions began to be raised about its authenticity. A crack through
   the lettering, it was whispered, had caused museum staff to query the
   age of some of the characters. A respected historian declared the
   inscription 'too perfect, too pat'. Epigraphers, too, were debating why
   the first part, 'James son of Joseph', was written in a straighter,
   more formal script than the second part, which they suggested could
   have been added later. There also remained doubts about the ossuary's
   provenance. Golan, by now revealed as the owner, said he 'could not
   remember' who had sold it to him. He was certain, however, that it had
   been well before 1978, when an Israeli law declared all subsequent
   acquisitions to be state property.

   
   The Israel Antiquities
   Authority (IAA) decided to launch its own inquiries, calling in
   epigraphers, geoarchaeologists and other experts to examine the burial
   box independently. But almost immediately, the IAA found itself having
   to solve another biblical mystery. An inscribed black sandstone tablet,
   apparently 3,000 years old, had been anonymously offered to Israel's
   National Museum at a price reportedly over $4 million. This
   inscription, too, purported to be important enough to rewrite the
   history books. The IAA asked its investigators, who included Yuval
   Goren, head of the archaeology department at Tel Aviv University, and
   Avner Ayalon, from the Geological Survey of Israel, for their views on
   this second extraordinary find.

   
   What made the tablet special was
   an inscription in ancient Hebrew with instructions from Joash, King of
   Judah in the 9th century BC, for maintaining King Solomon's Temple. If
   authentic, the Joash Inscription, as it became known, would be
   unprecedented physical evidence of the Temple's existence - 'an
   archaeological sensation', the Geological Survey of Israel concluded
   after an earlier brief examination, which 'effectively vindicates
   Jewish claims to the Temple Mount'. Except that it soon emerged that
   the mysterious middleman selling the tablet was already known to the
   authorities. His name was Oded Golan.

   
   In June 2003, the IAA's
   teams of archaeologists, linguists, historians, palaeographers and
   epigraphers delivered their unambiguous verdict. Both the Joash
   Inscription and the James Ossuary were recent forgeries. They concluded
   that freshly carved letters had been covered with an imitation patina
   made from modern tap water and ground chalk, mixed with ancient
   charcoal to confound carbon-dating tests. The forger or forgers had
   been clever: the Joash Inscription contained microscopic globules of
   gold, a persuasive link to the burning gold walls of Solomon's Temple.
   But there had been some crucial slips. Yuval Goren discovered that the
   patina on the front - but not the back - of the Joash stone contained
   tiny marine fossils. This led him to conclude that the patina on this
   side of the stone had been added later - and certainly could not have
   formed naturally in Jerusalem, miles from the sea. Tests using an
   electron microscope also identified fluorine on the surface - raising
   the possibility that the patina had been cooked up using municipally
   fluoridated tap water.

   
   A month later, the police raided Golan's
   Tel Aviv flat and found the James Ossuary - which he had previously
   insured for $1 million - sitting on a toilet seat on the roof. (Golan
   says the roof was 'safer' than his apartment, and that once his address
   had been leaked to the press, 'I was afraid that it might be stolen'.)

   
   Amir
   Ganor, head of the IAA's theft unit, claimed that investigators had
   also found various other forgeries in various stages of completion,
   together with a 'factory' equipped to create them (materials used for
   restoration work, according to Golan). Among their haul, they said,
   were bags of semi-finished ancient royal seals, a blank stone with the
   same dimensions as the Joash tablet, a newly engraved ossuary, and
   moulds that could be used to reproduce bronze statues.

   
   At the
   end of last December, Golan and four other men were charged on 18
   counts linked to the 18-month investigation. According to the
   indictment, the alleged forgeries - which the men deny - 'might have
   misled millions of Christians all over the world, as well as scholars
   of history and archaeology worldwide'. The IAA also warned collectors
   and museums in and outside Israel that their precious relics may not be
   what they seem. 'We discovered only the tip of the iceberg,' its
   director, Shuka Dorfman, said. But it wasn't simply the fact that the
   alleged forgeries had raked in 'millions of dollars' that bothered him.
   It was also that the accused 'were trying to change history'.

   
   ++++

   
   In
   a navy Eeyore sweatshirt and loose-fitting jeans, Oded Golan sits at
   his elderly parents' living-room table in northern Tel Aviv, wearily
   denouncing the case against him as 'Kafkaesque'. As his mother brings
   in iced lemonade, Golan, his jet-black hair set off by a sharp,
   straight nose, unflinchingly recounts the series of 'intentional
   manipulations' and 'blatant lies' which he says the IAA has laid
   against him. Its evidence, he says with a shrug, has less merit than
   the Western case against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

   
   Until
   a couple of days ago, it seemed unlikely that this meeting would take
   place. Golan, an unmarried serial entrepreneur, has been in jail for
   the past month, accused of unlawfully contacting a witness. He has been
   freed only after the Supreme Court's intervention, on the strict
   condition that he does not leave his parents' apartment. 'They are,' he
   complains, 'trying to make it impossible for me to defend myself.'

   
   As
   Golan tells it, he is simply a devoted antiquities collector caught up
   in the IAA's undeclared war against the legitimate trade. 'I've
   collected for 44 years, starting at the age of nine, and over time I've
   purchased more than 3,000 pieces,' he says with calm self-assurance. By
   his own estimate, Golan - a property developer, software entrepreneur
   and former airline agent - owns 'probably the largest private
   collection of biblical archaeology in the world', much of it displayed
   on his parents' shelves and in his own apartment. 'The IAA and the
   police claim that Oded Golan sold hundreds of forgeries and antiquities
   for dozens of years for millions of dollars,' he says, slipping
   detachedly into the third person. 'But in all this time, I've sold or
   exchanged antiquities on less than 10 occasions. That tells you the
   whole story in one sentence.'

   
   The charge sheet, which ranges
   from forgery to suborning others to commit perjury, lists Golan in
   various combinations with his co-defendants: Robert Deutsch, who owns
   three antiquities shops in Tel Aviv and Jaffa; Shlomo Cohen, who used
   to run a Jerusalem antiques shop; Rafi Brown, a former conservator at
   the Israel Museum; and Faiz El Amlah, a West Bank Palestinian. The 18
   charges cover the James Ossuary and the Joash Inscription, as well as
   various inscribed pottery shards, clay seals, a jug, a bowl and a
   decorative lamp.

   
   According to the indictment, the alleged
   forgery ring has claimed some astonishingly high-profile victims over
   the years. In 1988, the Israel Museum, the country's pre-eminent
   custodian of Holy Land art and archaeology, put on display a revered
   inscribed pomegranate carved from a hippo's tooth, bearing the words
   'Holy to the priests, Temple of [Yahwe]h'. André Lemaire, the French
   expert on ancient lettering, discovered the carving in a Jerusalem
   antiquities shop, and, as with the ossuary, unhesitatingly testified to
   its importance - leading the museum, until recently, to link it beyond
   doubt to the First Jewish Temple. So keen, indeed, was the museum to
   acquire such a precious relic that it paid $550,000 to an anonymous
   collector in a transaction involving numbered Swiss bank deposit boxes.
   To its great embarrassment, a few days before charges were brought
   against Golan and his alleged associates, the museum announced that,
   following tests by Yuval Goren, this inscription too was a modern
   forgery.

   
   'It was very hard for the investigating committee to
   say the pomegranate was a fake,' recalls Uzi Dahari, the IAA's deputy
   director, who commissioned Goren's forensic tests. 'This was the first
   evidence from the Temple in Jerusalem. For religious people on the
   committee, it broke their hearts to say it was a forgery. The Joash
   Inscription too, it's something unique for the Jewish people. But what
   can we do? Truth is above everything.'

   
   The IAA, whose main
   business is to license dealers and regulate excavations, has pursued
   Golan with utter determination. In bringing the charges, jointly with
   the police, the authority has built up 10,000 pages of written evidence
   as well as hours of video and audio interviews, and the court case is
   expected to last months - if not a year.

   
   Yet on paper, the
   indictments appear oddly incomplete. If Golan is at the head of a
   'ring', in none of the 18 charges is he linked with more than one other
   defendant. He alone stands accused over the ossuary, the Joash tablet,
   the bowl and the lamp; and although Robert Deutsch is jointly charged
   with him over some pottery shards, a decanter and some clay seals,
   Deutsch by himself has to answer charges over three further pottery
   pieces. And although the pomegranate is included as evidence of a
   'ring', none of the defendants is charged in connection with it.

   
   These
   apparent omissions may stem from the difficulty of proof: forgers,
   after all, would hardly leave a trail of receipts, and in the world of
   unprovenanced antiquities, it is common practice for buyers not to know
   a seller's name. But the gaps have given the defendants an opportunity
   to cast doubt on the entire case. Golan promises to sue Dahari for
   damaging his name - once, of course, he has cleared himself. Deutsch,
   for his part, says he will sue the IAA 'for at least $20 million'. 'I
   haven't seen Golan in eight years,' Deutsch insists in his shop, on a
   winding path in old Jaffa. 'Now I have clients asking me if the pieces
   they bought from me are genuine, people who owe me money not wanting to
   pay me, friends not talking to me. They really achieved what they
   wanted with that monstrous fabrication - to destroy my name.'

   
   Golan,
   in particular, seems to enjoy parrying each IAA accusation with a
   confidently asserted put-down. How could he afford to build his vast
   collection? He is independently wealthy, he says, through his family's
   '50 or 60 properties'. How does he account for the 124 witnesses the
   prosecution has to call on? 'Lawyers tell me that when you have a case,
   you need two or three witnesses,' Golan says. 'When you don't have
   anything, you need hundreds.' As for the 'ring', no professional
   fraudsters would produce such a wide range of items, he insists. 'If
   you're a specialist in making sculptures, you'll make sculptures. If
   you make inscriptions on pottery shards, you'll see dozens of those on
   the market.

   
   'You need palaeographers. You need the best expert
   in the world to write the Joash Inscription in ancient Hebrew. Then you
   need the best expert in Egyptian hieroglyphics to make the bowl. Where
   are the epigraphers? Where are the chemists? It's Oded Golan, Oded
   Golan. He's Superman!'

   
   And the ossuary, now widely discredited?
   'I'm still sure now, as close to 100 per cent as possible, that the
   whole inscription is authentic,' Golan says without breaking eye
   contact. 'So Yuval Goren finds the patina is not in its natural
   condition. That's because the inscription has been cleaned. All the
   world's important pieces have been cleaned. Just examine the Mona Lisa
   and you'll find varnish that didn't exist 500 years ago.'

   
   ++++

   
   Pinned
   to the wall in Yuval Goren's laboratory at Tel Aviv University is a
   cutting from a recent edition of Nature magazine. 'Indiana Goren,' it
   is headlined. 'At 48 years old, intense and good-looking, Goren could
   easily be the model for the hero of an archaeological detective series
   ...'

   
   After two years on the case, Goren says he now regrets
   being thrust into the role of fraud-buster. He had not realised quite
   how venomous the arcane world of archaeological scholarship could be:
   his own reputation has repeatedly been smeared by those who refuse to
   accept that the ossuary is fake, with suggestions that he is out of his
   depth, or the lure of "fame" has tarnished his judgment.

   
   Hershel
   Shanks, who still refuses to recant the validation he initially lent to
   the ossuary ('I don't know if it's a forgery or not,' he says curtly.
   'I'm just a publisher, not a scholar'), accuses Goren of doing 'a very
   bad job' in rejecting the inscription. 'He doesn't know anything about
   palaeography, and nobody has shown that anything's wrong
   palaeographically,' Shanks says dismissively. 'At best, you have a
   conflict of experts.' The IAA's Dahari, in turn, has publicly attacked
   Shanks as 'totally crazy' and his assertions as 'pathetic'.

   
   For
   a case focusing on biblical provenance, there has been an unholy level
   of bickering. One of Robert Deutsch's biggest customers was the London
   multi-millionaire Shlomo Moussaieff, to whom Deutsch dedicated a book
   last year on his 80th birthday. Moussaieff is mentioned in nine of the
   charges as a target of the alleged fraudsters, and is said to have paid
   $200,000 for an inscribed pottery shard, and to have written a $1
   million cheque for a royal seal. Deutsch, in his shop, now attacks his
   former client in terms that would make a libel judge blanche.
   Moussaieff did not respond to requests for comments.

   
   The
   fighting has also extended to those not directly linked to the case.
   And if institutions besides the Israel Museum have displayed
   biblical-era forgeries, they are not admitting it. The Royal Ontario
   Museum claims to have 'no new information pertaining to the James
   Ossuary that would lead us to conclude that it is not authentic'. The
   British Museum, too, says it knows nothing about any alleged fakes in
   its displays.

   
   But on strictly scientific grounds, Yuval Goren
   claims that there is no question that the James Ossuary is a fake -
   'and not a very sophisticated one at that'. Of almost 100 other items
   he examined in this case, 'only 10 to 20', he says, proved to be
   genuine. Sitting in his basement laboratory, Goren explains that he now
   understands a little more about the faker's mindset. 'The motive is not
   necessarily financial,' he reflects. 'The Piltdown fraud wasn't for
   money, nor were those of Shinichi Fujimura in Japan, who created his
   own sites and excavated them. No, it's often fame or the mental
   challenge. They're well-informed autodidacts who feel marginalised by
   the academy. So they're flattered when people like us show interest.
   I'm sure the forger behind this was very happy to outsmart some of
   these distinguished professors.'

   
   With a certain mischievous
   humour, Goren offers to share with me the secrets of faking a priceless
   ancient inscription. First, he says, always carve your letters using an
   iron tool, which will leave no traces of modern nickel or cadmium.
   Next, 'age' the inscription using an airbrush filled with quartz
   powder, before creating its 'ancient' patina by grinding stone into a
   watery paste. Burn tiny amounts of pure gold on to the surface, plus a
   bit of iron-age charcoal, and then bake your stone at 300C. Finally,
   bring in a few 'innocent scientists' to confirm its authenticity before
   surreptitiously sneaking it on to the market.

   
   (The Daily Telegraph Magazine, May 14 2005)

   me
   ha hecho pensar: podría darse por ejemplo un arquólogo-pirata o
   grupo-pirata que anunciase el descubrimiento arquológico del siglo,
   enseñarlo, y por detrás, haciéndose pasar por un listillo, podría haber
   uno vendiendo piezas del sensacional descubrimiento a los nuevos ricos
   snobs que necesitan demostrar su estatus con esa clase de
   exibiciones... ay mi pérfida imaginación...

   por cierto... eso de
   falsificar cociendo la inscripción y las pátinas falsas a 300 grados...
   qué pasó en aquella "cáMara sellada en el tiempo" ????

   es para descojonarse o no ?

2. 

   #2 Lykonius 06 de jul. 2007

   tradushion... de lo escrito en negrita, claro

   
   

   
   
   En octubre del 2002 el mundo competitivo de la arqueología bíblica fué
   revolucionado con el sensacional descubrimiento del osário de Jacob,
   una caja funerária de la que se dijo contubo los restos del hermano de
   Jesús. Pero las dudas sobre su autenticidad llevaron hacia una pelea
   poco espiritual la cual finalmente llega al tribunal la semana que
   viene en Jerusalen.

   
   

   
   
   "Jacob, hijo de José, hermano de Jesús"

   
   

   acusa a Golan de falsificar la inscripción como cabeza de un grupo
   de falsificadores que ha engañado coleccionistas y museos en las
   últimas dos décadas. El legado  del grupo, acusa el fiscal, es la
   de la falsificación de los mayores hallazgos arqueológicos bíblicos,
   desprestigiando así el mundo de la arqueología y dando falsas
   esperanzas a los creyentes, y también se pregunta veladamente sobre el
   proceder de algunos de los más prestigiosos museos del mundo,
   incluyendo el British Museum.

   
   

   Shanks acudió al grupo de Investigasciones Geológicas de Israel para
   analizar la caja científicamente. Los laboratiorios estudiaron la
   piedra, la suciedad incrustada en sus lados, y lo que más, la pátina
   (los resíduos exteriores creados por el tiempo). La piedra, declaró el
   laboratorio, era típica de la zona de Jerusalen. No se halló
   interferéncias de herramientas modernas, ni realmente nada "que pueda
   ensombrecer su autenticidad" de la inscripción y de la pátina.

   
   

   Un respetado historiador declaró que la inscripción era "demasiado
   perfecta, muy exacta". Los epigrafistas, también, debatieron por qué la
   primera parte "Jacob hijo de José" estaba escrita de una forma recta y
   más formal que la segunda parte, que según ellos pudo ser añadida
   posteriormente.

   
   

   Una lápida inscrita aparéntemente hacia 3000 años, fué ofrecida
   anónimamente al Museo Nacional de Israel al precio de 4 millones de
   dólares.
   
   

   
   

   
   
   

   
   

   escrita en hebráico antiguo con instrucciones del rey Joash, que
   governó Judá en el siglo IX aC para mantener el Templo del Rey Salomón.
   Si fuese auténtica, la Inscripción de Joash, tal como se acabó
   conociendo, se hubiera convertido en la prueba física capital sobre la
   existéncia del Templo - "un éxito arqueológico"

   
   

   ... "que reivindicaba con efectividad las reclamas judías sobre el Monte del Templo"

   
   

   
   una imitación de pátina hecha con agua corriente y cálcio, mezclada con carbón antiguo para confundir los análisis de carbono.
   
   

   
   

   identificó una preséncia de fluorina en la superfície -
   posibilitando la creéncia que la pátina fué cocida usando agua
   municipal fluorizada.

   
   

   otras más falsificaciones en diferentes estados de acabado, junto a un "laboratório" equipado para crearlas
   
   

   
   

   "podría haber confundido a millones de cristianos en todo el mundo,
   como a académicos de la história y de la arqueología por todo el mundo"
   

   
   

   Pero no era sólamente el hecho de que las falsificaciones recabaron
   millones de dólares los que más le preocupó. Fué más el hecho que los
   acusados "intentaron cambiar la história"
   
   
   

   
   

   Museo de Israel .....  un diente de hipopótamo con la inscripción "Santo para los sacerdotes, Templo de Yahvé"

   
   

   
   $550,000

   
   

   falsificación moderna

   
   

   "Los motivos no son necesáriamente económicos"... "No, muchas veces
   es por la fama" ... "De tal manera que se engreen cuando gente como
   nosotros muestran interés"

   
   

   Primero, dice, grava tus letras usando una herramienta de hierro, la
   cual no de ja trazos de niquel o cádmio modernos. Luego enevejece la
   inscripción usando un cepillo de dientes con polvo de cuarzo, antes de
   crear la pátina "antigua" triturando piedra en una masa acuosa. Quema
   pequeños trozos de oro en la superfície, junto a un poco de carbón de
   la Edad del Hierro, y luego cuece tu piedra a 300 grados. Finalmente,
   llevala a algunos "científicos inocentes" para confirmar su
   autenticidad antes de intentar intrododuciarlas furtívamente en el
   mercado.

   
   

   
   
   (The Daily Telegraph Magazine, May 14 2005)

   
   

   me
   
   ha hecho pensar: podría darse por ejemplo un arquólogo-pirata o
   
   grupo-pirata que anunciase el descubrimiento arquológico del siglo,
   
   enseñarlo, y por detrás, haciéndose pasar por un listillo, podría haber
   
   uno vendiendo piezas del sensacional descubrimiento a los nuevos ricos
   
   snobs que necesitan demostrar su estatus con esa clase de
   
   exibiciones... ay mi pérfida imaginación...

   
   

   por cierto... eso de
   
   falsificar cociendo la inscripción y las pátinas falsas a 300 grados...
   
   qué pasó en aquella "cáMara sellada en el tiempo" ????

   
   

   es para descojonarse o no ?

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