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On Fakes and Forgeries

1960; Classical Association of Canada; Volume: 14; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1085864

1929-4883

Gilbert Bagnani,

Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History

IN 1931 Ludwig Borchardt published as a Beilage to the sixty-sixth volume of the Zeitschrift fiir aegyptische Sprache four pages of text accompanied by six plates entitled Aegyptische 'Altertiimer,' die ich fiir neuzeitlich halte, a kind of Rogues' Gallery of fifty-six objects, many of them recent purchases by some of the most respectable museums in the world. could not help thinking him slightly naive when a few years later he complained that he found modern Museumsbeamten very unco-operative. In Berlin H. Schaifer, who had just reproduced one of the incriminated objects as a special plate in the second edition of his Propyliden Kunstgeschichte,' asked me to look up a somewhat similar relief in one of the smaller and older Italian collections. Since this would have come from Belzoni or Rosellini its authenticity should have been above all suspicion. Regretfully had to inform him that it happened to be one of the very few recent purchases; thus my intervention merely confirmed Borchardt and the embarrassing plate has disappeared from the third (1942) edition of Schiifer's work. The director of another great European museum, labouring, presume, under the delusion that, having been trained in Classical archaeology, was an expert in Ptolemaic sculpture, asked me to examine a large bust then displayed in the main gallery. The more looked at it the less liked it and pointed out some of the things thought suspicious. He replied: I entirely agree with you, but those are not the points that Borchardt makes, and produced a letter from Borchardt with some observations about the bust that were definitely wrong. The subsequent conversation revealed to me that though Borchardt, the director, and myself were all quite convinced, for different reasons, that the bust was neuzeitlich, since Borchardt's reasons for considering it so were incorrect, it would continue to be officially genuine: a curious and not uninteresting sidelight on the mentality of museum officials. What strikes one, however, in examining Borchardt's list is its brevity. To compile a similar list for Classical antiquities would be the work of a lifetime and would lead one into extremely devious paths. Egyptian antiquities, at least, pose a perfectly simple problem: if they are not what they appear to be they are straight forgeries produced, as a civilian would say, dolo malo-fraudulently, animo decipiendi-with malice afore1H. Schifer and W. Andrae, Die Kunst des alten Orients2 (Berlin 1930) Pl. 5.