Thread by @artcrimeprof

Did you accidentally rip up a Hebrew bible? Here's how to sell it as an early Christian biblical text... to a collector who will ask absolutely no questions. Here's a dissection of a fake provenance for this lot, currently on sale at Timeline Auctions: timelineauctions.com/lot/i-kingdoms…

Here's their description: "A fragment of a bifacial papyrus document including part of the text of I Kingdoms (I Samuel) in Coptic and Arabic... Provenance: Ex central London gallery; formerly with Christie's, 13 June 2012, lot 19 (part)."

Thanks, @ChristiesInc, for keeping your sales records online - here's the allegedly same thing: christies.com/lotfinder/book…

Christies tells us that the papyrus text they sold of I Kingdoms/I Samuel is in Coptic and was published in the Harvard Theological Review, here: jstor.org/stable/1509375

The journal article is about unprovenanced papyrus scraps - "Provenance: The Nile Valley (?)" - and describes them as written in red-brown ink with no separation of words.

And the article illustrates these fragments:

Here's the I Kingdoms/ I Samuel fragments as published by a scholar, as sold at Christie's, and... as advertised by Timeline. ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS.

Also... Timeline claims this thing they're selling is "in Coptic and Arabic." But... um... that's Hebrew. And not even Hebrew from Kingdoms/Samuel - @JoelBaden kindly pointed out that this is a part of Exodus 16. Photographed upside down.

Thank you also to @dyma, @KSH_Muenchen, @jordanamalka, @JollyRobker, @AgentElspeth, @wordsrdifficult, @KrebsVerena, @DannaAgmon who also all replied to my earlier tweet saying "yeah, duh this is Hebrew."

and @ryanfb has just chimed in to say that the material this is written on is clearly not papyrus.

Maybe of interest, @incunabula @john_overholt @stephenniem @Sonja_Drimmer @Yael_Rice