Two famous cases of forgery are associated with the figure of Moses Shapira, an antiquities dealer: the Moabite sherds sold to the Berlin Museum in 1872, and the pseudo-scroll of Deuteronomy written in ancient Hebrew in 1883. These two episodes were preceded by the discovery of the Mesha Stele, attributed to Mesha, king of Moab (1868), with which Shapira is also indirectly associated. A reassessment of this stele, based on archival material from the time, leads me to believe that the authenticity of the inscription it bears must now be called into question.Fair enough to raise the question. I doubt that epigraphers would have continued to be fooled by an epigraphic forgery from the nineteeth century. They know too much about the details of the Northwest Semitic scripts for that to be likely. To really make the case for forgery, one would have to show that the script of the Mesha Stele gets details wrong that no one would have noticed in the nineteenth century.[...]
It's true that we don't have many substantial lapidary royal inscriptions from ancient Israel. But we do have Hezekiah's Siloam Tunnel Inscription and some other fragments from his era. Perhaps not as many as have sometimes been argued. For discussion, see here and links. And there also is the fragmentary Tel Dan Stele, which was set up by an Aramean king, but which mentions the House of David.
For many PaleoJudaica posts on the Mesha Stele (Moabite Inscription), start here (plus here and here) and follow the links. For the renewed debate over the authenticity of the Shapira Scroll fragments, start here and follow the links.
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