| The Stone Box And Jesus' Brother's Bones |
|
| Written by admin | ||||
Page 2 of 2 Amir Ganor, head of the Antiquities Authority Detective Unit, was put on the tablet's trail. All leads pointed to the same address in downtown Tel Aviv: Oded Golan's apartment. They confiscated the tablet and decided to take the ossuary as well. But when Golan led them to it, these detectives could barely believe their eyes. "He opened a small chamber on the roof, and I saw this chamber is a toilet and what I found on top of the toilet, I found the ossuary of James the brother of Jesus," Ganor recalls. Golan doesn't try to deny that he kept the ossuary on the toilet, but he urges: don't leap to unwarranted conclusions. "I was really scared that people will come into the house and steal it, so I took it to the safest place in this building," he says. As they continued to search the building, they stumbled upon a workshop which they found interesting. There were drills designed, they thought, to cut new inscriptions. There were half-completed seals; ancient charcoal, useful perhaps, to outwit carbon dating. There were samples of soil from archaeological sites, which could be used to make fake patinas. The cops called the workspace a factory of fakes. "The police are talking to us also about earth and charcoal samples from a specific period that they say you would have used to make something appear to be much older than it is," Simon remarks. "This is just a wrong allegation, it's a false allegation, that's all what I can tell you. Because all the materials that I had, which are some soils, different color soils. It's in order to give when you restore an ancient piece you would like to give a feeling to the viewer that it looks old," Golan says. "You have restored some artifacts that you found?" Simon asks, "Yeah, a long time ago I used to do it, yeah," Golan says. But Golan says he has never created a fake artifact. But Israeli police don't believe Golan. They have charged him with several counts of forgery and fraud - the James’ ossuary, the tablet, and dozens of other artifacts that made their way into museums and private collections all over the world. "Museums and private collectors, couldn't they establish the fact that these were forgeries?" Simon asks Major Jonathan Pagis, who headed the investigation. "They really wanted to believe they were genuine," Pagis says. Pagis says that Golan wasn't working alone and that he had help from academics, dealers, and an Egyptian craftsman. "So Oded Golan was the head of the operation and he had an Egyptian who did the actual forgery?" Simon asks. "Yes," Pagis says. "The Egyptian makes the forgeries, and Oded Golan is marketing them." "So we are dealing with a sophisticated operation here. How good was the Egyptian at what he did?" Simon asks. "He's a very talented craftsman that's for sure," Pagis says. The Egyptian is Marko Sammech, who did work for Oded Golan over a period of 15 years. To find him, 60 Minutes sent producer Michael Gavshon undercover to the Cairo market where a lot of fakes are made, something the Egyptian authorities are reluctant to admit. Marko Sammech was surprised to see 60 Minutes. Gavshon asked him about the James ossuary and Marko denied that he had worked on it; he then showed Marko a picture of that $4 million dollar tablet. "I inscribed several stone slabs that looked just like this for Golan," Marko remarked. "Yeah, but I mean, he presumably gave you the text," Gavshon asked. "Yes, Golan brought me the text and I carved it onto the tablet," Marko replied. Marko said Golan didn't pay him very much, but when 60 Minutes told him that some of his work had been sold to collectors for a small fortune he was shocked. "These seals were sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars," Gavshon pointed out. "But these are just pieces of clay. You can barely see what’s written on them. Why would collectors pay that kind of money? It doesn't make sense to me," Marko said. "But they do, and they did. And they're very angry now because they understand that they were made in a workshop in Cairo," Gavshon said. "Tell them to call me. I'll make hundreds for them," Marko said, Marko may be amused, but the Israeli police are not. They desperately need his testimony to convict Golan. 60 Minutes learned the Egyptian authorities won't let him go. But it's not just Oded Golan who is on trial - it’s the entire world of archaeology. How many of the biblical treasures we see in museums were forged in some dusty alleyway in the Middle East? Will we ever know? Whatever the outcome of this trial, the real casualty is knowledge itself - our passion to dig down to the real foundations of our history and our faith. Copyright: CBSNews.com |
||||
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
