Fool or Be Fooled?

Imagine you just paid 7 million dollars for an incredible one-of-a-kind perfect condition sculpture. How proud you would feel? You must be proud. . . after-all you could afford such an incredible wonder. And just think what your friends would have to say about it. Oh and don't forget how nicely round out your collection. I mean honestly it is such a lovely collection of works. You do have a whole lovely collection of ancient artifacts from all over the world (but especially the latest craze of Roman works). Or come to think of it you could even give it to a museum and receive all kinds of tax credits and respect. That really wouldn't be all that bad. Just imagine the joys of having enough funds to really do whatever you want with them, and a hobby of collecting ancient works. 

So what do you do next? But of course you must invite over all your friends and even some of the archaeologists from the museums to show it to. And in the midst of all your congratulations and claps on the back atta-boy's getting such a catch, an archaeologist raises his voice: "This is a fake."  WHAT?! How is that possible?  The horror and the shock wash over you, and then the fury that they would say your precious purchase was a fake.  Indignant perhaps?  Mad that it could be possible that someone could have fooled you and that someone NOW is telling you otherwise??

And then the sinking feeling, you bought other things from this dealer before. Could you ever imagine that some of the artifacts you had seen on display or may have bought could possibly be fake?

A painful experience perhaps?  Well, you just got a little taste of what the Getty Museum official people and archaeologists faced with the Getty Kouros. And boy was that quite a scandal.  The Getty paid $7 million for an artifact which has been declared fake by renowned archaeologists.  The only ones (according to the work of Felch and Frammolino) who were in favor of the Kouros being real were not well known and were people who could gain from having their names thrown around a bit in the archaeology world. And even still there is debate DEBATE about whether or not it is real. . . can you imagine just how frustrating it must be. To have bought something worth $7 million and then if it's a fake it's worth soooo much less, and if it's real it will still be worth less because people already associate it with a fake. It is a lose lose situation here, especially for archaeologists. If you are trying to learn about the past using artifacts supposedly from the past to reconstruct ideas of the people who lived back then. . . and then all of a sudden the artifacts you were working with turn out to be fake or have been modified, then all your hard work is for naught!  Or at least it won't be worth much anymore. . . not for research or for grants or even for understanding history (except trying to understand WHY people make fakes).

Interested in seeing some of these lovely fakes: Ancient Artifacts: Fake or Authentic? Faking things is actually quite an art form. Imagine just how much it pays if you can rip someone off passing it off as a real x,y, or z.