Volume 38, Number 3 · January 31, 1991
The Charms of Deception
By Matthew Rutenberg
Fake? The Art of Deception
edited by Mark Jones
University of California Press, 312 pp., $24.95 (paper)
In 1869, a stele with an inscription mentioning the biblical figure Mesha, King of Moab (Kings II 3:4), was found in Palestine. It was immediately acquired for the Louvre by Charles Clermont-Ganneau, the French consul in Jerusalem and a prominent archaeologist. This inscription stimulated great interest in the little-known Moabite people.[1] A contemporary Jerusalem painter called Selim then undertook to produce wholly from his imagination examples of their ancient art, mainly in the form of terra-cotta pots and figurines. These are fairly comic in appearance and were greeted with skepticism; but the German consul (actually named Baron Münchausen) was determined not to be beaten again by the French and purchased over 1,700 of the objects for the new museum in Berlin. Their acquisition was conceived by officials of the new Reich as the first step in a program of Near Eastern archaeology to rival the great French and British achievements. In various heated exchanges that took place across Europe, German scholars and politicians defended their prizes. Only in 1876, when the great liberal historian Theodor Mommsen denounced the collection in a speech on the floor of the Prussian Diet, did the authorities give way and consign the material to storage.
Review, 4805 words
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