Egyptian statue in forgery claim BBC - News, Monday, 20 March 2006

There are only two similar exhibits in the world

Two men have been bailed by police investigating the alleged forgery of a valuable Egyptian statue. The 3,300-year-old Amarna Princess was bought by Bolton Museum nearly three years ago for £440,000 to add to its existing Egyptology collection. The 52cm-high sculpture is believed to be one of the daughters of the Pharaoh Akhenaten and his queen, Nefertiti.

Metropolitan Police Art & Antiques Unit arrested two Bolton men aged 83 and 46 on suspicion of forgery last week. They have been bailed until May pending further inquiries.The statue, which was acquired in September 2003, has been removed from public view.It was bought by the museum form a local family in Bolton, Greater Manchester, who wanted to remain anonymous.

Detectives from London also seized an artefact from the British Museum which had been taken there for an examination by experts.

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Kelsey Museum of Archaeology: The art of the fake

Exhibit Curators: Robin Meador-Woodruff, Terry Wilfong and Janet Richards
Exhibit Designer: Anne Noakes

Most museum collections contain a certain number of forgeries, and the collections of the Kelsey Museum of Archeology are no exception. Over the almost one hundred years of museum collecting history, various objects of dubious authenticity have found their way into the collections.

Forgeries are collected both inadvertently and on purpose by museums. Often, a donated object will be accepted by a museum which has no curator whose expertise lies in that type of material. The piece may appear to be genuine to a non-specialist, and the object enters the collections. Later examination by an expert will prove that the piece can not be original. In other cases, the piece may be accepted as genuine by the experts until subsequent scholarship or scientific testing disproves authenticity. Finally, there are cases where forgeries are of such a convincing construction that they simply fool the experts. Often, forgers are well-educated enough to be familiar with those aspects which popular scholarship attributes to the works of a particular period, and incorporate those aspects into a forgery.

This small limestone sculpture is cleanly carved, with dates attributed to the Ptolemaic Period of Egypt (332-30 BC). The Head of a King was purchased by the museum in 1925. However, upon closer examination, the Head of a King has been shown to be a forgery.

In 1992, Visiting Curator Edna R. Russman was able to determine that the piece [Head of a King] was similar to other works she has seen by this particular forger, namely in the facial resemblance between the sculptures in this group of fakes. Additionally, the details of the crown are incorrect, with the inclusion of the uraeus and a snake stretched along the center of the head. This combination of elements would not have occurred in a genuine work. Russman felt that the forgery was produced in the early 1920's, and that it was a very well executed forgery, perhaps assisting the forger in fooling experts for almost seventy years.

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The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

A Mysterious Statue Group in the Walters Art Museum The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore contains several interesting forgeries made in the beginning of the 20th century. The authenticity of a statue group of a standing couple (inv. no. 22.114), which was exhibited in 1988 as an original of the 18th Dynasty, is also questioned. The condition of the piece, especially the type and place of the damage; the mixture of different iconographic and stylistic details; as well as the missing inscriptions are arguments for a modern date for the piece.

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Oxan Aslanian, the "Master of Berlin"

Oxan Aslanian was a 20th century forger of Egyptian art. Born in Green in 1887, he emigrated to Syria and Egypt, and then eventually came to Germany, where he opened an antique shop in Berlin. In his work as a forger, he concentrated on the Amarna Period. His extraordinarily high-quality products satisfied the demand of many eminent collections and museums in Europe, which gave him his nickname as the "Master of Berlin." He created some exceptional fakes, which sometimes still deceive experts. Aslanian died at the age of 80 in Munich.

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How forgeries corrupt our top museums NEWSTATESMAN, 20 December 2000.

Our knowledge of entire ancient civilisations is being corrupted by fakes. Foolish scholars and curators are to blame, reports Peter Watson. READ MORE