A photo from open sources
The Washington Bible Museum recently removed from its collection five previously considered very valuable exhibits as they were supposedly the oldest artifacts – “Qumran manuscripts”. However German researchers of antiquity recognized them as fakes.
The scandal occurred just before the opening of the museum, which financed by the billionaire evangelist. Note that the museum has significantly more fragments of the Qumran Manuscripts – sixteen, five are recognized as fake, but relative to the rest German scientists also have doubts about artifacts.
Recall that the Qumran Manuscripts, or, as they are also called, “Scrolls of the Dead Sea”, began to be found in caves since 1947 Judean Desert. They contain various ancient apocrypha, for example, the texts of the Torah relating to the era of the so-called The second temple. All these artifacts are written on parchment, antiquity. which is easily determined by radiocarbon analysis.
A photo from open sources
However, given that such manuscripts are being assessed today in millions of dollars and there are many who want to buy them, not only among national museums, but also private collections of multimillionaires, fraudsters began to use pieces of skin just that far period, putting on them fresh inscriptions in ancient Hebrew or Aramaic.
There are many specialists in the world who are familiar with these languages, therefore scientists believe that in private collections is now a lot fakes, since in this case a thorough analysis and verification artifacts from the best specialists most often do not held.
Currently, German experts have begun thorough study of the remaining fragments of the “Qumran manuscripts “, which, it is possible, may also be fakes, only more skilled …
On the pictures: fragments of the “Dead Sea Scrolls” from the museum Amman’s capital of Jordan.
Ancient artifacts
