Martin Wiessler TV - For Fake 1974 - Fake or Fortune TV - Boaz Gaon - Amnon Rosenfeld - Horizon TV - Yuval Goren - The Solomon Treasures TV - Secrets of the Bible TV - The Man Who Forged America TV - News Report - Robert Scott - Stray Mutt - Masterminds TV - Art of the Heist TV - Rogue Trader 1999 - Days that Shook the World TV - Arthur C Clarke TV - Larissa Tracy - Emily Craig - Nicholas Allen - Lillian F Schwartz - The Da Vinci Shroud: Revealed TV - Clive Prince - Lynn Picknett - Decoding the Past TV - Turin Shroud: New Evidence TV - Leonardo: The Man Behind the Shroud TV - The Real Face of Jesus? TV - Remaking the Shroud TV - Ralph Hodgson - Art and Craft TV - Dusty Ermine 1936 - Cutting Edge: The Artful Codgers TV - Werner Herzog - Better Call Saul 2015-2020 - The Forger 2014 - Gambit 2012 - Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art TV - Murder Among the Mormons TV - Conmen Case Files TV - History’s Greatest Hoaxes TV - Jesus Code: The Secret Brother of Jesus TV - Rochelle Altman - Lost Tomb of Jesus? TV - Devil’s Advocate: The Mostly True Story of Giovanni di Steffano TV - Trafficked TV - Assignment Redhead 1956 -
In the weeks before he secured his global scoop with Princess Diana, Martin Bashir asked his friend and colleague at Panorama, a BBC graphic designer, to do a job for him late one evening … ‘I am this guy that’s remembered for forging the document. And I want to clear my name … Martin asked me to make up a couple of bank statements about people being paid to do surveillance that he needed the following day. And he did say that they were just going to be used as copies.’ Matthias Wiessler, BBC graphic designer 1986-1995, interview, The Diana Interview 1/2: Revenge of a Princess
This is a film about trickery, fraud, about lies. F for Fake 1974 starring Orson Welles & Oja Kodar & Joseph Cotten & Elmyr de Hory & Clifford Irving et al, director Orson Welles
The author of Fake a book about a faker was himself a faker – Clifford Irving – and the author of a fake. ibid.
The restless souls being I guess Cliff Irving over there and Elmyr. Coincidence #1: that these two world leaders in fakery operated quite separately on the same tiny island. ibid.
A fake is a fake, and Elmyr himself is a fake faker. ibid.
Irving’s book about Elmyr is the story of a man of talent taking the Mickey over those who had rejected him. ibid.
Art dealers either in ignorance, innocence or simple greed have made themselves fortunes on the paintings of Elmyr. ibid.
For the past seventeen minutes I’ve been lying my head off. ibid.
We have been forging an art story. ibid.
There was one faker of the twentieth century who left all others standing. His name was Han Van Meegeren. He conned the art world out of about £65,000,000. Fake or Fortune s1e3: Van Meegeren, Philip Mould, BBC 2011
Twenty-one of his fakes have now been identified. And I suspect there are more lurking out there. ibid.
He later confessed to faking seven old masters. Crucially the Courtauld’s picture was not amongst them. ibid.
Including works by the artist Van Meegeren dared for forge – the seventeenth-century master Vermeer. ibid.
Van Meegeren managed to fool the experts by his painstaking use of seventeenth-century materials. ibid. Fiona Bruce
The story begins in 2001. A professor from the Jerusalem University receives a call from a mysterious person who refuses to give his real name. And asks this professor to come to a hotel in Jerusalem ... He opens up the briefcase. Takes out a gorgeous piece of black stone with ancient writing on it, and asks the two professors to authenticate the piece. Boaz Gaon, Ma-ariv Newspaper
We couldn’t find anything that would lead us to the conclusion that it was a forgery. Dr Amnon Rosenfeld, Geological Survey of Israel
The Temple was built to house the Ark of the Covenant. Horizon: King Solomon’s Tablet of Stone, BBC 2004
In July 2001 a unique inscribed tablet of stone mysteriously appeared in Israel. It was an archaeological marvel that seemed to solve one of the Bible’s great riddles. Tested by some of Israel’s top scientists it revealed that in the heart of Jerusalem three thousand years ago one of the legends of the ancient world had really existed – the magnificent Temple of Solomon. ibid.
The geologists studying the stone found that the patina was continuous across the front of the stone ... The patina contained tiny flecks of gold. Just what you’d expect from a stone that had been through a fire in a temple lined with gold. In January 2003 the Geological Survey official pronounced the stone to be genuine. ibid.
Where did the stone come from? ... The whole area is far too politically sensitive for archaeology ... It was then that the saga of the stone became very mysterious indeed. ibid.
Oded Golan is a businessman and renowned collector. Owner of Israel’s largest collection of antiquities. He explained that he wasn’t the owner of the stone and that he didn’t know where it was. He had just been involved as a middleman. ibid.
In 2002 one very special ossuary appeared. Inscribed on the side were the words James, Son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. It was heralded as the first physical evidence of Jesus Christ and caused a worldwide sensation ... Strangely, the owner was Oded Golan. ibid.
The Israeli authorities were also suspicious. They raided Golan’s apartment and store-houses. There they found the ossuary perched on a toilet. And they also unearthed the illusive stone. ibid.
The focus of their attention was the patina ... Yuval Goren is a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University. And a geologist. He has a detailed knowledge of both Biblical archaeology and the rocks of the Jerusalem area. ibid.
How could the patina on the front of the stone be different from that on the back? ... The patina from within the carved letters. Strangely, it didn’t seem to be bonded to the stone in any natural way at all. ibid.
Alarmed by what he found with the stone Professor Goren turned his attention to the James’ ossuary. Again he found a similar story. A freshly cut inscription with an artificial patina applied over the top. On 18th June 2003 the Israeli authorities delivered their verdict. ibid.
In the summer of 2003 after the biggest archaeological investigation in Israeli police history Oded Golan was taken into custody. It was then that investigators realised they could be dealing with more than just the stone and the ossuary. When police searched Golan’s apartment they found a hidden workshop filled with tools and half-made artefacts. ibid.
The patina is very loosely connected to the stone. Here you can see how it reacts to me scraping it with a matchstick. And you see that it easily peels off the letter as opposed to the backside. When the letters are cleared, the inner part of the letters is exposed, and as you can see here it is very freshly cut; you can see even the little lines, the little parallel lines of either the chisel or even maybe some drill, some electric bit or drill, with which the letters were engraved, which is of course is very unusual for ancient inscriptions ... And therefore I believe that the inscription is not genuine. Professor Yuval Goren
It is very freshly cut. You can see even the little lines, the little parallel lines of either the chisel of even maybe a drill, an electric drill. Professor Yuval Goren
It is a little Pomegranate made of the tooth of the hippopotamus ... The inscription was engraved on it when it was already broken. It is probably a fake, probably a forgery. Professor Yuval Goren, Tel Aviv University
In recent years a series of extraordinary finds has been found in the Holy Land. These astonishing discoveries are linked to some of the most famous events in the Bible. They appear to be new evidence for the burial of Jesus. And for the legendary Temple of Solomon. The Solomon Treasures, BBC 2006
And it was here more than twenty-five years ago in Jerusalem’s Antiquities Market that one of the most remarkable artefacts in the Holy Land’s history first came to light: it was a tiny object, just four centimetres long, badly damaged and no-one knew where it came from. But it would be hailed as a unique piece of history. It became known as the Ivory Pomegranate. It was thought to be the ornamental tip of a priest’s ceremonial staff. But what amazed the experts was the inscription: Holy to the Priests of the House of God. It suggested that this exquisite little object was used by priests in the first temple of Jerusalem, which according to the Bible, was built by King Solomon ... There was no independent evidence apart from the Bible that Solomon’s Temple actually existed. ibid.
According to Biblical history the Temple was destroyed by fire in 586 B.C. by invaders from Babylon. The Western Wall where Jewish pilgrims come to pray is all that’s left of a second temple built on the same site as King Solomon’s Temple by King Herod the Great. ibid.
So the Pomegranate was an extraordinary find. The tiny artefact with a large chip on one side was the first physical link to the first Temple of Solomon. But was the Pomegranate authentic? ... When the Museum tried to track down the owner, they came up against a wall: the Pomegranate had already changed hands ... The Pomegranate was returned to Jerusalem and there in the Israel Museum along with such priceless national treasures as the Dead Sea Scrolls it was given pride of place. An authentic link to King Solomon’s Temple. ibid.
The inscription on the shiny black stone describe repairs made to the Temple of Solomon by a king called Jehoash in the 8th century B.C. If it was genuine, it was priceless. Like the Ivory Pomegranate it seemed to confirm that Solomon’s Temple actually existed. Better still, it provided unique confirmation of events in the Old Testament ... All the stranger would reveal was it was found near the Temple Mount. ibid.
They found the surface contained tiny flecks of charcoal – which proved to be over two thousand years old. And they found tiny specks of gold – just what might be expected if it had survived a fire when the gold-encrusted Temple of Solomon was destroyed. ibid.