Thread by @incunabula

Incredibly, this archeologist apparently employed by the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, has now doubled down when told the manuscript was a worthless fake, and insisted they have determined it's genuine. This is an embarrassment, and a terrible indictment of their so-called experts.

https://twitter.com/ahmed_mamoori/status/1395607530122928130

Quite apart from all the other screaming clues - the 20th century Star of David, the ridiculous gold, the bizarre iconography never found in any genuine Hebrew manuscript - even a child with kindergarten-level Hebrew reading ability would see the text is just random gibberish.

These "ancient Hebrew manuscripts with gold writing" fakes are made in their hundreds in Turkey, and sold to gullible wealthy Turkish businessmen, usually with the cover story that they were looted from synagogues or the homes of "rich Jews who hide their secret gold" in Syria.

The Turkish businessman thinks he's getting an unbelievable bargain, paying thousands for something he'll be able to sell for millions. The production and sale of these fakes relies on anti-semitic tropes, and the total or near total absence of any actual Jews in these countries.

These fakes self-perpetuate, because when the original businessman finally shows the manuscript to someone who reads Hebrew, and then realizes he's been had, rather than writing the money off, he typically tries to resell it to someone else, with the same story he was told.

There's literally no-one academically or professionally involved with Hebrew manuscripts who doesn't know about these absurd fakes (but also rather sinister because of the anti-semitic tropes they exploit), they've been around - and laughed at - for years.
blog.nli.org.il/en/spotting-a-…

I can't emphasize enough that these are not fakes that take any expertise to recognize: they're immediately self-evidently absurd. In Western terms, imagine a claimed companion volume to the Book of Kells written by a 10 year old child with crayolas, colored sharpies and glitter.

These fakes exploit the historic ethnic cleansing of Jews, a desire to show the claimed crudeness and vulgar ostentation of Jewish art as compared to the refinements of Islamic calligraphy, and the trope that Jews hide wealth. So they're not just funny: they're despicable too.