Antiquities Authority chief: Top scholars were suspected of ties to forgery groupRead the whole article; there's too much of interest to excerpt it all. But the bottom line seems to be that the iceberg has been steadily melting as the prosecution has been forced to back away from its original claims.
By MATTHEW KALMAN, SPECIAL TO THE JERUSALEM POST
A world-famous French scholar who authenticated one of the Israel Museum's prize exhibits and Israel's leading analyst of ancient semitic inscriptions were once suspected of being part of an "international forgery industry," it was revealed on Tuesday.
Shuka Dorfman, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said that both Prof. Andre Lemaire of the Sorbonne and Ada Yardeni, Israel's leading epigrapher, had been under suspicion as the Authority prepared its case against those accused of faking dozens of priceless archeological items, including a burial box possibly connected to Jesus.
Dorfman divulged this information as part of the testimony he was giving at the Jerusalem District Court in the long-running trial of two men accused of dealing in fake antiquities.
The trial, which began in 2005, followed an indictment that Dorfman described at the time as "the tip of the iceberg" of an international forgery network.
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Background here.