A TRICKY QUESTION:
Can you buy genuine antiquities in Israel? Even If you're getting a real artifact from Israelite history, chances are it's not kosher (Marty Friedlander,
Haaretz). The basic answer is in this excerpt:
An artifact of "unknown provenance" can be sold; one from Tel Maresha or any other specific place will go to a museum collection or basement.
Which brings us back to the original question: Is that Persian period juglet in the store window genuine?
The shopkeeper will say yes. And most likely, it is. There’s such an abundance of genuine material available that it makes no sense to start making counterfeit pots and vessels.
Ah, but was it robbed as part of an illegal excavation? This is a far tougher question, one that if asked is liable to have you thrown out of the store. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is the byword of this business.
Coins are different. They are more likely to be counterfeit, several Old City antiquities dealers admitted to this reporter. Archaeologists concur.
Then there is this way to acquire a genuine antiquity, which is win-win all around:
An alternative to acquiring antiquities in the somewhat unsavory retail marketplace is to burrow through the stockpile of less-significant shards at an actual dig site. For instance, at Israel’s most popular hands-on archaeology-for-a-day program, “Dig for a Day” at Tel Maresha, the staff scrubs, examines and catalogs all of the shards found by the volunteers, and then offers the diggers a chance to take home the discards, which consist mainly of shards that lack identifying features.
For the archaeologist, the piece may be no more than a discard. But when the tourist sees it on her coffee table back home, it conjures up the memory of that day when she felt such a strong physical connection to an ancient culture, that is still very much alive.
More on the discovery of the fragments of the Heliodorus stele is
here and links.
