T. G. Wakeling

“ The love of money has always been a marked characteristic of the Egyptian, and here the ingenuity of the descendant of the old craftsman asserts itself. There is no doubt that he has, from time to time, been assisted by various Europeans, but he is producing replicas of antiquities, scarabs, figures, models, so cleverly cut and made that it puzzles many of the best experts to say whether they are false or real. Some of these imitations are sold for very high 9prices. If the discovery of a fraud is made in time, part of the money will sometimes be refunded. ”

“ To such a pitch has the art of manufacturing imitations been carried that I propose to give a few of the more common examples, and here I may say that the morality of dealing in antiquities resembles, to a great extent, that involved in the buying and selling of horses. If you go to a respectable and responsible dealer, you pay more, but you are sure either to get a genuine article or to have your money returned if things go wrong. ”

“ It must be remembered that most of the servants in Egypt are Berberines, from Nubia, and as the cultivable land up the Nile is in places reduced to a few hundred yards, and travelling by boat is cheap, it will be seen that the men can easily get to know each other well even though miles of the Nile waterway may separate the villages.
But the “up-river man” is not the only itinerant seller of antiquities. A donkey boy may have found out that he can make more money by selling antīcas to his patrons than he can by running after his donkey, even though the bakshīsh be included ”

“ If found out, they will swear by their gods that it is you who are mistaken, not they. They will look you straight in the face while telling you the most bare-faced untruths. This attitude they will carry to a great length and then suddenly break down, grin, and admit that the 69supposed antiquity is a fraud, but will deny any desire to cheat you. Later on they will make a special journey to see you again, bringing with them some more forgeries, fondly hoping that you may be induced to buy one of them. ”

“ It must be clearly understood that the majority of the vendors of scarabs are far better judges of their value than any ordinary collector, and therefore a man, even though he be only an old and dirty individual, would be most unlikely to sell for a dollar and a half a scarab which was worth £4 or £5; and the natives usually take their 80finds first of all to dealers, who would certainly not let a good scarab pass them.
European makers have now entered the arena, and are competing with the natives as makers of antiquities, but so far the latter have had the best of it. ”

“ Nor does the silence of your guide on the way home tend to relieve the feeling of oppression and smallness, until perhaps by some good fortune one meets a man who knows; then the feeling changes to one of relief at the escape and wrathfulness at the attempt that has been made to swindle you. ”

“ Then there are the more prosperous sellers with their feet firmly set in the path to fortune, who combine the selling of forged antiquities with dealings in the real articles. Sometimes a dragoman varies his legitimate business by bringing before the notice of his party antiquities which he declares are genuine, or introduces a seller, who at the conclusion of the bargain hands over to the dragoman a fair percentage of the spoils. ”

“ There is no more trying moment in an Egyptologist’s life than when, after a good dinner, while he is feeling at peace with all the world, a charming hostess brings out an antiquity for him to pass judgment upon. I have seen men literally squirm, and many are the subterfuges employed by them to 4avoid giving an opinion. Woe betide the unhappy expert if a mischievous friend happens to be there who will lead their hostess on to ask questions, and who will assure her, despite mute appeals, that her victim is an expert in the particular branch to which her statue or jar, as it may be, belongs. ”

“ By a merciful dispensation, Allah has given the Nazarenes into the hands of the Faithful. So he chooses riches; for, after all, money means strength and honour in his village, and perhaps—who knows?—one or more wives who will be beautiful as the houris of Paradise of whom he heard the Mullah discourse in the mosque only the last Friday. The prospect is dazzling and fills the boy’s brain. Rich and powerful, men will look up to him with respect, he will possess feddans of land and children will rise up around him.
He clasps his hands and looks at a donkey distastefully. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A very large number of scarabs have been found which are made of composition material, or cut out of a piece of stone and left uncoloured. These fetch very small prices, although they may be the genuine articles, therefore the up-river men have taken to re-glazing them. They obtain pieces of old glaze from the ushebti figures and pieces of old glass and melt these down. But the re-glazed scarabs can usually be detected, even although the colour may be correct, by the irregularity of the glazing, and the fact that between the legs of the beetle the dirt can usually be seen under the glaze. ”

“ A man from the Delta went to a dealer in Cairo and said that one of the farmers in his district had found some gold things in a tomb while taking soil from the ground, and now he wanted to find a rich man to buy them, one who would keep his secret so that the Government should not punish him and take them from him. When the dealer agreed to go and see them, the man advised him to take £200 or £300 with him. The dealer cautiously said, “No, I shall take only £20.” It was arranged that he should go to his informant’s 13village, and that the finder of the jewels should be brought to him there. ”

“ 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, 2museum authority, and expert collector may be safely left to take care of themselves ”

“ The Egyptians who are engaged in the 123making of spurious antiquities are now specialising. One man in Luxor has perfected the manufacture of glazed or faience vessels. Another at Qeneh has developed the cutting and inscription of stone scarabs. At Aboutig a forger makes woodwork and carved ivories, and somewhere in Egypt they are making stone vessels of all periods, apparently on a steam lathe, but copying the ancient forms with great success. A dealer in Cairo once showed me an enormous head of Amenemhat III., which he said was offered to him as coming from Tanis. ”

“ Khargeh is an oasis in the Libyan Desert, lying more than one hundred miles to the west of the Nile. In the ancient days the Romans had an outpost there. Now it is the scene of the labours of a land company, and the Egyptian Government sometimes banishes habitual criminals and bad characters to this place.
On another occasion, when I was purchasing spurious antiquities, the seller produced a well-made statue of Isis with the infant Horus. ”

“ These men have seen many workmen hard put to it to pull a small granite statue weighing three or four tons up an inclined plane of less than 45 degrees. And yet what wonderful patience and courtesy most of these experts show to well-meaning but ignorant questioners, even when they are perhaps burning to be free to turn back more pages of hidden history. ”

“ Most of the wooden forgeries come from Gurna and the scarabs from Luxor. In the villages near to Deir-el-Bahari are made the porcelain vases and figures, whence come also the stone heads and statuettes. A number of composition figures are made in the Delta, and may be met with at Zagazig and Benha.
A few years ago the forgers used to make and sell their own work, but now that they are becoming rich and rising in the social scale they are content to leave the selling part of the business to others and themselves stay at home to carry on the making of further imitations. ”

“ They had been hard to deal with, but he had sat for days, threatening them with the police and the wrath of the Antiquities Department. In the end he had bought the statue for the price of a feddan of land. He was as innocent as milk of doing wrong things, but some kelb (dog) had told the Department of Antiquities lies, and now he could not conduct his business without fear. It was best to be honest, as he had always said, but what could one do with men whose breath poisoned 59the air around them? Life was hard, and only fools went out of their way to seek for trouble. ”

“ From time to time the vendors make a coup, which, as there is a certain freemasonry amongst them, becomes known, and stimulates others to renewed efforts.
The novice in antiquities is extremely likely to be taken in, and should he show any disposition to buy, or express a wish to purchase, articles other than those shown to him, by some mysterious means the news goes round, and immediately there gather from all parts sellers of specimens both false and real. ”

“ On another occasion I made an experiment as to whether my association with modern forged antiquities would be sufficient to bias an expert in expressing his opinion as to the genuineness of articles of known antiquity submitted to him.
I obtained four specimens (see Plate XVI) , of undoubted antiquity, although even these 145are examples made in or for Nubia about 3500 years ago of Egyptian Funerary objects of New Empire period (reign of Thothmes III) .
The largest scarab is of very poor workmanship. ”

“ It is a perfect craze with the Egyptians to get rich, and perhaps our forger has been earning 10a precarious living for years, receiving in pay the equivalent of a shilling or two a day. He has always kept in mind the possibility of making a coup such as I have described. He has worked hard and cultivated a plausible manner and learned English with this single object in view. If he is successful, and the fraud is not discovered until too late, he will occupy a high position in his village and will live happily, but always with the hope of making a further haul. ”

“ The natives oil antiquities to make them 76look polished or to enhance the colour. This method the forgers are applying now to their productions.
There is a man at Qus who is a most clever forger of gold jewellery, but he also does a good deal of work recutting scarabs. His procedure is to grind the inscription off the base of the original scarab, recut the cartouche, and re-glaze it. The scarabs can be detected by the thinness of the base plate, and by the peculiar manner in which the hawks are made, with a hump on the back, like the Mut vulture. ”

“ 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 3runs a vein of genuine regret that the nice-spoken, honest-looking and plausible Hassan or Mohammed had cheated them. ”

“ Any one discovering antiquities must notify the Antiquities Department at once; should the articles found be of a movable nature the finder will receive half the objects discovered or their value in money. ”

“ Some years ago the authorities at the Museum in Cairo would give their decision regarding antiquities shown to them by visitors, but now that is all changed, and they refuse to express an opinion. The Egyptians, however, still loudly protest that they are willing to have their scarabs submitted to the Museum authorities, knowing perfectly well that the experts there will give no opinion at all ”

“ If a buyer of some specimen wishes an expert opinion upon his purchase, he usually lays a deep plan. Perhaps he knows a man connected with the museum, whose opinion is worth having; or, if not, he gets some one to introduce him. ”

“ The old beads are made of a kind of composition; they are thicker, less regular, and there is usually one part upon which the colour has failed to be equal—that is the side upon which the beads were laid when fired.
No. 1 shows some glass beads supposed to be Roman, but they were made recently in Venice.
118No. 4 is a string of imitation sacred cats with genuine old beads, used as a necklace.
There is a beautiful story, the humour of which would be spoilt by too searching an inquiry into its authenticity, about what is jokingly called “the predynastic mummy.” ”

“ However, it represents a period when Egyptian Art was declining.
I remember an up-river man, who was employed on an excavation, picking up a piece of stone, and in his spare time fashioning a head out of it with his knife. Later on he showed it to his employer. The excavator looked at it grimly for a few moments. Then, remarking that the man was far too clever to be a simple workman on a digging, he discharged him and sent him back to his village.
A few years ago some life-sized alabaster statues of Mykerinos, the builder of the Third Pyramid, were found by the Harvard University Expedition. ”

“ A favourite price with these men is £40, and this is what the man asked for the first figure he brought out; £20 for the mummy figure, and £10 for the other. I offered £1 for the three. On hearing this he very scornfully packed them up again, and we proceeded to bargain for the smaller antiquities he had brought with him. Then the touch of the money in his palm seemed to quicken his desire for more. Quickly some black beads, a forged wooden paint-pot, alabaster pots, scarabs, and various other things changed hands for a shilling or two each. ”

“ EGYPTOLOGISTS It would not, perhaps, be out of place to make some special reference to the men who are doing so much to throw light upon the thoughts and lives of the old Egyptians; but here is need to tread as warily as may be, for these are a race apart. ”

“ During the past few years, the making of forgeries has received a great impetus owing to the scarcity of the real articles, and the ever-increasing demand. Many are the humorous tales told about the difficult positions in which experts have found themselves, when suddenly confronted with palpable frauds and a demand for an expression of opinion.
A story is told of an expert who wished to play off a joke upon a very old and valued friend. So he fashioned two scarabs, and cut upon them the story of the circumnavigation of Africa. ”