APPREHENDED BUT FAKE:
Turkey seizes rare ancient Hebrew manuscript in major antiquities smuggling crackdown (All Israel News).
The Turkish media portal Türkiye Today published a report on Monday about the ongoing efforts to combat the illegal trade in antiquities that are often looted from legitimate archaeological digs throughout the region.
The report included details about an archaeological artifact recently seized by police, along with other contraband that smugglers were attempting to sell on the black market. The item is a two-meter manuscript inscribed on python skin with gold Hebrew script, which is of particular interest to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). It had been rolled up and stored inside a copper case with an “ornate, embossed lid,” according to the report.
[...]
Granted, the parchment medium for this manuscript is creative, but is the IAA really interested in it? I doubt it.
YNet News has also covered the story, with a marginally better copy of the very bad photo:
Hebrew text in gold on python skin seized in Turkey black-market antiquities probe. Authorities in Gaziantep say they seized a two-meter python-skin manuscript inscribed with Hebrew letters in gold and detained a foreign national suspected of illegal excavations and trying to sell the rare artifact on the black market (Yogev Israeli).
The item is consistent with the types of finds usually uncovered by antiquities traffickers operating across the region. Illegal excavations at archaeological sites remain an ongoing problem that Turkish authorities are trying to combat.
This scroll is indeed consistent with some finds seized from antiquities traffickers in the region. My assessment is that, like many of them, it is clearly a fake.
By expanding the bad photo you can get a blurry look at the the text on the scroll. It consists of a continuous string of Hebrew letters with no clear word divisions and no words, at least that I can make out. As the headline notes, the letters and images are gold, which is a hallmark of recent fakes.
I am not a specialist in ancient iconography, but the images don't look ancient to me either. Compare, for example, the hexagram design to the hexagram in another Turkish fake noted here (second link). The article noted here has a photo with a very similar hexagram design and a griffin underneath it holding a menorah. The griffin design in the current (python parchment) manuscript on the right side has a nearly identical griffin that appears to be next to an (only partly visible) large menorah image.
All that said, as always, I commend the Turkish police for going hard on antiquities smuggling.
There are many legitimate ancient epigraphic and other archaeological discoveries coming out of Turkey. I cover them all the time. But many dodgy "ancient" Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac manuscripts also turn up, generally recovered by the police from smugglers. This looks to me to be one of the latter. I tend to ignore them, but I do note one occasionally. For lots more of them see here and the relevant link.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
