A 2,500-year-old Darvish inscription found in Tel Lakish (Photo: Emil Eljem, Israel Antiquities Authority)
The Antiquities Authority announced today (Friday) that the ancient pottery found by travelers at Tel Lakish, bearing the inscription "Darivash Year 24" - is not authentic.
The mistake was discovered after a world-renowned researcher admitted that she engraved the inscription on the vessel.
According to the researcher, who is considered one of the few in the world who specializes in transcriptions of the ancient Aramaic language, she engraved the inscription on a tour with students last August, and then left the find in its place.
"The Antiquities Authority takes responsibility for the incident," says Prof. Gideon Avni, the authority's chief scientist.
"The pottery was studied by Dr. Hagai Meshgav, a world-renowned expert on ancient Armenian writing, and by the archaeologist Sa'ar Ganor, who studies Tel Lakish, but it turns out that we came across an 'inscription in disguise'.
As an organization to which scientific truth is a candle, we are committed to correcting the mistake before the public.
From an ethical-scientific point of view, the incident is very serious.
Leaving the engraved address on the site was negligent, and this led to misleading the researchers and disrupting the scientific truth.
You can count on one hand incidents of this type that happened in archaeological research."
The address that misled the researchers (photo: Israel Antiquities Authority, Yuli Schwartz)
The researcher made it clear that she did not leave the pottery with malicious intent, and in light of the incident, the Authority will refresh the procedures among all foreign excavation delegations operating in Israel.
Prof. Avni added: "The incident illustrates the danger that exists in adding modern writing on top of ancient objects - a topic that has occupied the scientific community for many years. At the same time as the paleographic examination by an experienced expert, the object was tested in laboratories and found to be ancient pottery. This proves once again that only an object that is discovered In an orderly excavation and coming out of the ground in the eyes of the archaeologists, it is 100% real. Every other object that is discovered raises question marks."
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