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Disputed Provenance For Renowned Historical Items

lindseyinstereo1

Gone But Not Forgotten
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lots of fakes

in Baltimore Maryland they used to show a ship called the Constallation that they gave you a tour of as an American Naval war vessel dating to 1757 and it cost a good amount of $ to go on the tour. Then about 1991 they admitted that it was a total fake, and that they had created all of these fake newpaper articles and historical "facts" about the ship. Baltimore was outraged, this ship was a huge tourist attraction. Here is a little more:

"Regarding the putative controversy regarding the origin of this "Constellation", the so called transcript of an 1853 Portsmouth newspaper article is a fake as are all the other "transcripts" which support that totally bogus pseudo history. An entire history of evidence was manufactured by a single crazed individual with the intent of perpetuating this fraud. The fact that it was a fraud has been perfectly well documented in "Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered", by Dana M. Wegner, et aliis. This paper was published by the US Navy's David Taylor Research Center ini 1991. This is the definitive, scholarly paper. In addition, in the course of disassembling the vessel for the repair, we have found absolutely no evidence of any material that predates 1853. "


I just wonder how many other, more successful tourist attractions are really fakes like this, but rake in the money so they keep it under wraps?
 
allemandi.com/TAN/news/article.asp?idart=11684

Unknotting a tangled tale of towels
Scientific tests have established that an icon, revered as an imprint of Christ’s face, is 13th century

By Martin Bailey

Tests on a painting, called the Mandylion, revered as a miraculous imprinted image of Christ, have revealed it to have been made in the 13th century. There are several early versions of the image, but the one in Genoa is the first to have been subjected to a thorough scientific examination. The results are being presented at an exhibition (until 18 July) in the city’s Museo Diocesano as part of the European Capital of Culture celebrations. Appropriately, the show is presented as a journey, both spiritual and scientific—since the venerated icon has links with Syria, Turkey, Sinai and Armenia.

The Mandylion is traditionally believed to be a representation of the face of Jesus miraculously transferred to a towel (from the Arabic word mandil, “small cloth”), but is not to be confused with the cloth, which also bears His likeness, with which Veronica wiped Christ’s face as He went to Calvary.

The first mention of the existence of the Mandylion comes from the sixth century. In 944 it was brought from Edessa to Constantinople by emperor Constantine VII. The imperial city lost the Mandylion in the crusader conquest of 1204, when it was sold to the French and taken to the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Other versions existed from early on in Rome and Genoa.

The provenance of the Genoa Mandylion can be traced back to the 1370s, when Byzantine emperor John V presented it to Leonardo Montaldo, Captain of the Genoese colony on the Bosphorus and later Doge of Genoa. On Montaldo’s death in 1384, he bequeathed his Mandylion to the Armenian monastery attached to the Church of San Bartolomeo in Genoa, where it has remained for over 600 years.

The church recently agreed to a small sample of wood being removed from the poplar panel, for carbon dating at the University of Lecce. The results show that there is a 90% probability that the panel on which the painted linen image is fixed dates from between 1240-90.

Other objects associated with the Genoa Mandylion were also examined. Most important is the magnificent gilded silver frame, which was made in Constantinople in the mid-14th century. Enclosing the original frame are two later cases made in Italy, one in 1601 and the other in 1702.

The back of the Genoa Mandylion is covered by a fine piece of 10th-century Syrian silk. The fact that the original Mandylion arrived in Constantinople in 944 has led exhibition co-curator Colette Dufour to suggest that this silk could have once formed a covering for the original icon.

The Sinai connection
Also temporarily on show in Genoa are a pair of diptych panels from the Greek Orthodox monastery of St Catherine’s, which have left Sinai for the first time in over 1,000 years. Art-historical detective work has proved that these must originally have been wings for another Mandylion.

The upper-right image on the diptych depicts King Abgar receiving the imprinted towel of Christ. Abgar is given the facial features of Constantine VII, who brought the Mandylion from Edessa in 944. The other wing shows the Apostle Thaddeus, whom Christ had sent to establish the church in Edessa. The wings are 28 centimetres high, the same as the Genoa Mandylion, which is the clinching evidence that they were created for a triptych with the face of Christ.

The Sinai wings have been dated on stylistic grounds to the second-half of the 10th century and were probably painted at St Catherine’s. It is therefore now being suggested that a copy of the Mandylion was given by Constantine VII to the monastery very soon after the original had reached him in 944, with the wings being created as protective shutters for this precious gift. A photographic reconstruction of the “Mandylion Triptych” has never been published, and appears in The Art Newspaper for the first time.

The mystery is what happened to the lost Sinai central panel of the Mandylion. As a small object, it was vulnerable to theft, but what is curious is that the wings were separated from it and survive. This has led exhibition co-curator Professor Gerhard Wolf to propose that the Sinai Mandylion “may have been returned to the emperor in Constantinople after the original was seized by Crusaders in 1204”.

Historical background

Legend has it that King Abgar of Edessa, who reigned during the time of Jesus, was ill, and believed that an image of the Saviour would cure him. He sent an emissary to Jerusalem to paint Christ’s portrait. Instead Jesus took a towel and put it to his face, which was brought back to Edessa, in ancient Syria (Sanliurfa in present-day Turkey). The Sainte-Chapelle version was looted during the French Revolution and probably destroyed.

Another Mandylion was taken to Rome and by 1587 it was in the Convent of the Poor Clares at San Silvestro in Capite. In 1870, it passed to the Vatican. It is currently in the “St Peter and the Vatican” exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art (until 6 September). The US catalogue accepts the Vatican dating, ascribing it to the third to fifth centuries, but the entry reveals considerable uncertainty. However, Professor Wolf believes that the Vatican icon dates from the same period as Genoa’s, and is also 13th century.
 
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in Baltimore Maryland they used to show a ship called the Constallation that they gave you a tour of as an American Naval war vessel dating to 1757 and it cost a good amount of $ to go on the tour. Then about 1991 they admitted that it was a total fake ...

The currently exhibited sloop of war Constellation is no 'total fake'. What's 'fake' was the longstanding claim it represented the refurbished / rebuilt frigate of the same name.

It turns out that the USN was complicit in perpetrating the myth that the 1854 Constellation wasn't a completely separate ship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constellation_(1854)
 
The famous bust of Nefertiti is disputed by some.

Is this Nefertiti – or a 100-year-old fake?

In his book, Le Buste de Nefertiti – une Imposture de l'Egyptologie? (The Bust of Nefertiti – an Egyptology Fraud?), Stierlin has claimed that the bust was created to test ancient pigments. But after it was admired by a Prussian prince, Johann Georg, who was beguiled by Nefertiti's beauty, Borchardt, said Stierlin, "didn't have the nerve to make his guest look stupid" and pretended it was genuine.

I know a potter and archeology fan who claims he used to make pocket money in his youth by knocking out roman pots for a local antiques dealer.
 
It's always looked like a fake to me. Wrong style completely. I'm not surprised it's alleged to be a fake.
It fits quite nicely into the aesthetic popular at the time of its 'discovery'. Notice that article I posted is ten years old though – I wonder if there have been any follow ups.
 
It fits quite nicely into the aesthetic popular at the time of its 'discovery'.

Yes, exactly! It looked too modern back then.
Also, there were no other realistic busts of ancient Egyptian rulers that I'd seen, not a single one.

This one was the centrepiece of a TV documentary about Nefertiti and was shown often in it from various angles and with a circling camera. It was certainly presented as authentic at the time.
 
It always worries me that there could've easily been skilled and metamotivated individual or groups who could've worked to produce finds and wall-finishes similar to Glozal, or (where it suited them) on top of 3000+BCE originals, but carrying-out their actions in say 800CE. People in past didn't give a stuff about the past....we're all precious about it because we'e overfed underworked gods compared to them.

I'm also reminded about those two antiquities forgers (was it Cornwall?) uncovering stacks of Roman silver items....produced in their kitchen from melted period coins. Made a fortune....largely unchallenged.
 
I'm also reminded about those two antiquities forgers (was it Cornwall?) uncovering stacks of Roman silver items....produced in their kitchen from melted period coins. Made a fortune....largely unchallenged.

I missed that! do you have a link or further info Ermintruder?
 
@Frideswide - unfortunately no. Someone else may do though. Unsure of the locale.

Right or wrong (and you know where I'm tending here) Von Däniken certainly blew my 8yr-old brain in the 1970s with "Chariots". He formed an access route for me into Forteana, underpinned by all the other books of the day on UFOs and Nessie etc. So he has his uses....as long as you remain skeptical regarding his claims.
 
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The Mildenhall Treasure's provenance is murky:

[URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildenhall_Treasure said:
wikipedia[/URL]']While the majority of scholars support the identification and dating of the objects, and their association with the Mildenhall site, some scholars, at times, have argued that the Mildenhall Treasure may be misdated, or may not truly belong to the Mildenhall site. They argue that the pieces do not properly resemble the style and quality of work expected to be found in provincial Roman Britain, and that since none of the pieces show damage from having been "discovered" with a plough or shovel, there is the possibility that it was not in fact buried at Mildenhall all these centuries, and rather came from somewhere else. Some have suggested the pieces were looted from sites in Italy during World War II, brought back to England and re-buried so as to stage a "discovery", though most scholars give little credit to that theory, and abide by the standard story that the objects were hidden by fleeing Romans who intended to return for them at a later date and never did.
 
Nazi buddha from space might be fake
The narrative was, perhaps, just a little too good to be true. When news broke last month of the so-called "buddha from space" – a swastika-emblazoned statue, apparently 1,000 years old, that had been carved out of a meteorite and looted by a Nazi ethnologist – the world was enthralled.

There were only, it turns out, a few slight catches. According to two experts who have since given their verdict on the mysterious Iron Man, it may have been a European counterfeit; it was probably made at some point in the 20th century; and it may well not have been looted by the Nazis. The bit about the meteorite, though, still stands.
 
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