SANDSTONE TABLET AND KNEELING FIGURE 54 A WINGED SCARAB AND THE FOUR GENII 94 A SEALED JAR, MADE OF WOOD, AND PAINTED TO 101 REPRESENT STONE; PERIOD, 20TH DYNASTY A HAWK’S HEAD, THE LID OF A CANOPIC JAR 102 SMALL ROUGH MODEL OF AN IBIS, IN PORCELAIN 106a HATHOR 106b JAR MADE OF SERPENTINE 108 THE GODDESS TAURT 112 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FORGED EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY THERE are a great many people in the world who are interested in Egypt, in its antiquities, and in the unfolding of its pages of ancient history; a number collect specimens of old Egyptian art, such as scarabs, pottery, small statues, &c., and others, when in Egypt, buy them as presents for friends at home. It is for this numerous class, which is year by year defrauded of large sums of money by the plausible sellers of forged antiquities, that this book has been written, for most of them, sooner or later, find out to their dismay that that which they had thought was a genuine relic of ancient days, and prized accordingly, is nothing more nor less than a clever fraud, and, from a collector’s point of view, worthless. The Egyptologist, museum authority, and expert collector may be safely left to take care of themselves; a perusal of the following pages might even prove interesting to them, although it is exceedingly unlikely that the book contains anything new so far as they are concerned. The selling of spurious Egyptian antiquities is not confined to Egypt alone. London, New York, Paris, and even Algiers, are also the hunting-ground of the makers of imitations, who often make large sums of money by imposing upon those who do not possess the knowledge requisite to detect the fraud. It is interesting to analyse the frame of mind of the people who have been cheated. As a rule, they are angry, but they are extremely careful to keep their feelings to themselves. If you inquire, they pooh-pooh the transaction as one of little moment, and pass it over, although, as I shall presently show, many pounds may have been lost. But if the conversation is not changed, and you wait patiently, you will presently find that under the carefully repressed annoyance runs a vein of genuine regret that the nice-spoken, honest-looking and plausible Hassan or Mohammed had cheated them.