The Solomon Treasures (2008) - full transcript

(soft mysterious music)

In recent years,

a series of extraordinary

finds has been made

in the Holy Land.

These astonishing

discoveries are linked

to some of the most

famous events in the Bible.

They appear to be new

evidence for the burial of Jesus

and for the legendary

Temple of Solomon.

This is something

that biblical scholars

have been waiting for,

have been dreaming of,

for many years.

Here is a proof.

We can touch it, we can

smell it, we can go see it.

This is where we came from.

It's an earthquake,

a revolution.

Or is there another darker story

behind these mysterious objects?

(soft ethereal music)

Jerusalem, the Holy

Land's most important city.

For centuries it's

been the center

of a flourishing

antiquity trade.

Government Inspectors

try to monitor the trade,

but thousands of artifacts

change hands here every day.

Genuine pieces

2,000 or more years old

can be bought for a

few hundred dollars.

And many collectors

have learned not to ask

awkward questions about

how the dealer came by them.

And it was here more

than 25 years ago,

in Jerusalem's Antiquity Market,

that one of the most

remarkable artifacts

in the Holy Land's

history first came to light.

(soft relaxing music)

It was a tiny object, just

four centimeters long,

badly damaged, and no

one knew where it came from.

But it will be hailed as a

unique piece of history.

It became known as

the ivory pomegranate.

It was thought to

be the ornamental tip

of a priest's ceremonial staff.

But what amazed the

experts was the inscription.

(Man speaking in Hebrew)

Holy to the priests

of the House of God.

It suggested that this

exquisite little ornament

was used by priests in the

first Temple of Jerusalem,

which, according to the Bible,

was built by King Solomon.

If the pomegranate was

what its inscription claimed,

it was a revolutionary find.

Before it came to light there

was no independent evidence

apart from the Bible

that Solomon's Temple

had actually existed.

3,000 years ago, Jerusalem

was a small Iron Age city

whose ambitious

King, the Bible tells us,

decided to build a

house for his God.

In the fourth year

of Solomon's reign over Israel,

the construction of the

Temple of the Lord was begun.

The existence

of Solomon's Temple

is central to traditional

Jewish belief.

The house

which King Solomon built

for the Lord, the length

thereof was threescore cubits.

The breadth thereof, 20 cubits.

And the height

thereof, 30 cubits.

Over 12 meters

high and over 30 meters long,

the House of God would

have dominated the city

and its people.

(soft relaxing music continues)

Since then, Jerusalem has

suffered nearly 2,500 years

of turbulent history.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims

all claim a stake in the

city that features so large

in the history of their faiths.

A vast Muslim shrine,

the Dome of the Rock,

now occupies the site

where Solomon's Temple

is presumed to have stood.

According to biblical history,

the temple was

destroyed by fire in 586 BC

by invaders from Babylon.

(crowd murmuring)

The Western Wall, where

Jewish pilgrims now come to pray,

is all that's left of

a second Temple

built on the same site

as Solomon's Temple

by King Herod the

Great, 500 years later.

(crowd murmuring)

In a country where

cultural and territorial rights

are the essence of politics,

the story of Solomon's Temple

has special

significance for the Jews.

But there's no trace

of the Temple itself

and archeologists

are not allowed to dig

in such a politically

sensitive area.

(wings fluttering)

Archeologist Israel

Finkelstein has amassed

thousands of artifacts

from that period of history,

but not a fragment

of evidence to back up

the Bible's account

of Solomon's Temple.

There's no archeological

evidence for the simple reason

that we cannot excavate

in the Temple Mount.

I think also that

even if it was possible

to do something on

the Temple Mount,

there's a big question whether

we could have discovered

anything from the first Temple

of the biblical times,

because there was a huge

building operation there

in the time of Herod the Great,

and there's good reason to think

that everything was eradicated.

(soft ethereal music)

So the pomegranate

was an extraordinary find.

The tiny artifact with a

large chip on one side

was the first physical link to

the lost Temple of Solomon.

(dramatic pulsing music)

But was the

pomegranate authentic?

In Israel, many

genuine antiquities

find their way onto the

market from dubious sources.

Just beyond the walls of

the old city of Jerusalem,

Amir Ganor, Chief Investigator

for the Israel

Antiquities Authority,

is checking an underground

tomb from the time of Jesus,

the first century AD.

(loud scraping)

(door banging)

Israel has thousands

of ancient historic sites.

Many are untouched and

still contain valuable artifacts

from biblical times.

But all too often when

archeologists arrive to explore them,

they find that looters

have beaten them to it.

This is only one of

thousands of caves

that we have in this area.

And unfortunately,

most of them are looted.

You could see the

damage that they done here.

They took everything,

they destroyed this tomb.

(soft upbeat music)

The Holy Land's heritage

is being plundered for cash.

We assume that

95% of the antiquities

that now are in the

hands of the dealers,

they are stolen

property or they looted.

(soft upbeat music continues)

Most of the loot

is brought to the

Jerusalem Market

where the ivory

pomegranate first appeared.

The man who came across

it in the Jerusalem Market

happened to be one of

the world's leading experts

on ancient inscriptions,

Professor Andre Lemaire.

One of the sellers told me,

"I know an inscription which

belongs to somebody else.

"And would you be

interested to see it?"

He examined it closely.

This is a very small object.

You have to be aware

that it is only about

four centimeters high.

And the inscription is

still smaller, of course.

And looking at

it very carefully,

I found that from what I could

see, everything was okay.

There was no problem.

After inspecting

the engraved Aramaic text,

Lemaire had no

doubt it was genuine.

He published his report,

declaring it to be authentic

from the eighth century BC,

the time of Solomon's Temple.

(dramatic orchestral music)

The tiny pomegranate would

have played a humble part

in the magnificent Temple.

It would have been

carried on precessions

through the two great halls,

whose walls were paneled

in sweet smelling cedarwood.

If the pomegranate belonged

to one of the high priests,

it would have accompanied him

into the Temple's inner

sanctum, the Holy of Holies,

where winged cherubim

guarded the Ark of the Covenant

and the towering walls

were encrusted with gold.

But however humble its

role might've been then,

it was now the only artifact

to survive from the Temple.

(relaxing flute music)

The Israel Museum, home

to a world renowned collection

of biblical artifacts, was

now very keen to acquire it.

It was an object

of some excitement

because when first identified,

it was considered that

it might be an object

directly connected to the first

Temple, to Solomon's Temple.

And we really have

very little material

that comes from that

period from Jerusalem

and that can be directly

connected to that moment in history

and to the physical

existence of the Temple.

But when the museum

tried to track down the

owner, it ran into a wall.

The pomegranate had

already changed hands.

There wasn't a dealer in Israel

who seemed to know where it was.

The word was it had been

smuggled out of the country.

Then several years later

in 1987, out of the blue,

the museum received

a mysterious phone call.

(Man speaking in Hebrew)

The pomegranate

was now available,

but at a price.

(Man speaking in

Hebrew) million dollar.

Desperate to get their hands

on this unique piece

of Jewish heritage,

the museum bartered

the price down

to just over half a

million dollars in cash.

Israel's leading expert

was asked to check it out.

When he too decided

it was genuine,

the cash, provided by

an anonymous donor,

was paid into an anonymous

Swiss bank account.

The pomegranate was

returned to Jerusalem

and there in the Israel Museum,

along with such priceless

national treasures

as the Dead Sea Scrolls,

it was given pride of place,

an authentic link to

King Solomon's Temple.

(soft relaxing music)

For nearly 20 years,

it was regarded as the

only physical evidence

for the Temple.

Then in uncannily,

similar circumstances,

another extraordinary

artifact became headline news.

In 2002, the Chief Investigator

for the Israel Antiquities

Authority, Amir Ganor,

was given a special mission,

to track down a brand

new piece of biblical history

that had gone missing.

It was a hunt that

would take him

the length and

breadth of the country

and provide a major scoop

for a young Israeli

newspaper reporter.

The story begins in 2001.

A professor from the

Jerusalem University

receives a call from

a mysterious person

who refuses to

give his real name

and asks this professor to

come to a hotel in Jerusalem.

He arrives and

another professor,

he receives another call saying,

"We are changing the

location of the meeting.

"Please take a taxi

to a different hotel."

A person who he

has never met before

arrives with a briefcase.

The man with the briefcase

claimed to be acting

on behalf of a client.

He couldn't reveal

his client's identity,

but was sure the professors

would be very interested

by what he had

brought to show them.

(soft mysterious music)

He opens up the briefcase,

takes out a gorgeous

piece of black stone

with a ancient writing on it

and asked the two professors

to authenticate the piece.

The inscription

on the shiny black stone

describe repairs made

to the Temple of Solomon

by a King called Jehoash

in the eighth century BC.

(soft mysterious

music continues)

If it was genuine,

it was priceless.

Like the ivory pomegranate,

it appeared to confirm

that Solomon's Temple

had actually existed.

Better still, it provided

unique confirmation

of events described

in the Old Testament.

The professors wanted to

know who the owner was

and where the

object had come from.

(Man speaking in Hebrew)

(Man with sunglasses

speaking in Hebrew)

All the stranger would reveal

was that it had been found

near the Temple Mount.

They wanted to take the stone.

They wanted to, you know,

perform a thorough

investigation of it

and to authenticate it

or reveal it as a forgery.

The person refused, of

course, to give the stone.

Said, "That's

impossible because of,

"you know, complications."

There was no way the professors

could properly

authenticate the tablet

after such a brief examination.

You know, he takes the stone,

he puts it back

in his briefcase.

He says, "Thank you very much,"

to the two bewildered

professors and leaves them behind

in the Jerusalem lobby.

(dog barking)

(soft relaxing music)

The place where the tablet

had allegedly been found

was at the foot of

the Temple Mount,

the heart of Old

Jerusalem, where,

according to legend,

Solomon's Temple once stood.

(dog barking)

(soft relaxing music continues)

But how could anyone be

sure that a blackened stone

allegedly found

in a pile of rubble

was a genuine

3,000 year old relic?

The owner, whoever

he was, realized this

for shortly afterwards,

other experts were secretly

approached by intermediaries

and asked if they could

authenticate the tablet.

One of them, Geologist

Amnon Rosenfeld,

has spent his working life

studying the rocks

around Jerusalem

used by masons and

engravers in biblical times.

We were asked to

examine something

that should be kept secret

called the Jehoash Tablet.

Our starting point

was that this is a fake

and we should find some

signature of a forgery.

Dr. Rosenfeld

and his colleagues

were allowed to examine

the stone over several months

in his lab at the

Geological Survey of Israel.

We couldn't find

anything that lead us

to the conclusion

that it's a forgery.

We find many

criteria that point out

that it might be an

authentic inscription.

If the tablet was genuine,

it was precisely what

Jewish archeologists

have been seeking for ages.

I was very excited because

this type of inscription

is something that

biblical scholars

have been waiting for,

have been hoping for,

have been dreaming

of, for many years.

(soft upbeat music)

The inscription on the tablet

corroborated the Bible's account

of how King Jehoash decided

to refurbish the Temple.

The Book of Kings

tells us that repairs

were needed to the building,

which would by then have

been over a hundred years old.

From its benefactor.

They in turn shall strengthen

the damage in the house,

wherever damage may be found.

And this is how the

tablet records those events.

I repaired the construction

and I made the

repairs in the Temple

and the walls all around

and the side buildings

and the lattice work

and the trap doors

and the recesses in the doors.

Then I think that

we're speaking about

the same royal act of

repairs in the Temple.

And the language

is also rather similar.

Meanwhile,

analysis of the tablet

by the scientists

had revealed more.

They found the surface

contained tiny flecks of charcoal,

which proved to be

over 2,000 years old.

And they found

tiny specks of gold,

just what might be expected

if it had survived a fire

when the gold encrusted

Temple of Solomon was destroyed.

(soft mysterious music)

(Reporter speaking in Hebrew)

The astonishing revelation

was widely regarded as proof

that the tablet was genuine.

Everyone was

dumbfounded by this discovery.

I mean, it was like a, you know,

an alien spacecraft landing

in the middle of Jerusalem.

Here's a stone

with an inscription

that is actually quoted

from the Jewish Bible.

And that proves

that a Jewish Temple

actually stood in Jerusalem.

Here is a proof that

our national heritage is,

can be basically, you

know, we can touch it,

we can smell it,

we can go see it,

we can take our children.

This is where we came from.

The Israel Antiquities Authority

urgently wanted to know how

the owner, whoever he was,

had come by an

artifact of such national

and historical significance.

Amir Ganor, the

Authorities' Chief Investigator,

pumped his contacts in

the market for information.

He suspected it had

been illegally looted.

But the word on the

street told a different story,

as Journalist, Boaz

Gaon soon discovered.

I traveled to Jerusalem

and started to dig

and try and find out

who the owner of

this new tablet is.

And the people in

the antique industry

who, you know, do not

like to expose their identity,

they told me straight away

that they think it's a hoax.

(soft pulsing music)

Whether it was a hoax or loot

or the genuine article,

Amir Ganor was determined

to track down the owner

and the tablet itself,

which had now disappeared again.

He had many rumors to follow,

but it would take a long

time to get a clear picture.

We spent three

months on the road

to try to find this tablet.

The months of detective work

finally led him to Tel Aviv,

Israel's modern

commercial capital

and in a fashionable

residential quarter,

to the home of a businessman.

One of Israel's leading

antiquity collectors, Oded Golan.

Golan has been

collecting ancient artifacts

since he was a boy.

Here you are looking now

at the oldest, the

most ancient dictionary

ever found in the world.

I found it when I

was 10 years old.

He admitted he had been helping

to sell the missing

stone tablet,

but denied he had

ever been its owner.

He was a dealer,

Palestinian dealer,

who had a shop

in East Jerusalem.

Abayasa was his nickname.

So I didn't have

enough money to buy it.

And he asked me if I

can help him to sell it

or to offer it to somebody.

And I had actually

only one condition.

It should stay in a

museum for the public.

How much was he asking for it?

700,000 of dollars.

But the authorities

were not convinced

by the story.

And what made

them highly suspicious

was that the same

collector, Oded Golan,

had recently been involved in

another sensational discovery

that had suddenly appeared.

(soft relaxing music)

In the vast collection

of ancient treasures

held by the Israel

Antiquities Authority,

there are hundreds

of stone boxes,

all dating back to

the time of Jesus.

Simply engraved, some bearing

a name in Hebrew or Greek.

They had a macabre purpose.

They are ossuaries,

receptacles for storing

the bones of the dead.

In 2002, one of these

ancient bone boxes

became the center of

worldwide media attention.

Ya'akov bar Yosef

akhui di Yeshua.

The inscription translates

as, "James, son of Joseph,

"brother of Jesus."

For these familiar names

from the New Testament

to appear together seemed

a remarkable coincidence.

The ancient bone box was hailed

as the final resting

place of Saint James,

the brother of

Jesus of Nazareth,

and the first

archeological evidence

linked to Jesus Himself.

It caused a sensation

and was viewed by

nearly 100,000 people

at the Royal Ontario

Museum in Toronto.

Another extraordinary

biblical artifact.

And its owner was Oded Golan.

Two dramatic

artifacts were discovered

in the space of six months

by the same collector.

This was very, very

difficult to believe.

I mean, you know, what's next?

The shoes of Muhammad?

I have to admit it, it

sounds quite strange.

But if you have

the good context,

the good relationship,

you'll get the good stuff.

It's very simple.

He claimed he had

owned the ossuary for years.

In the mid-70s, I

bought several ossuaries,

actually three, and I

bought it in East Jerusalem.

So why had it taken him 30 years

to realize the possible

significance of the inscription?

The first person who

actually gave me the idea

that it could belong to

the family of Jesus Christ

was Professor Andre Lemaire.

Back in the 1980s,

Professor Lemaire

had been responsible

for authenticating

the ivory pomegranate.

20 years later, his

reputation as an expert

in ancient inscriptions proved

valuable to Oded Golan.

I was amazed with the name,

but mainly with the

appellation, brother of Yeshua,

James the brother of Jesus.

For me, there is no

problem about the fact

that the inscription is genuine.

Professor Lemaire's opinion

that the inscription was genuine

transformed the

Brother of Jesus' Ossuary

into an archeological sensation.

But not every

expert was convinced

the inscription was authentic.

I laughed. I

couldn't believe it.

You gotta be kidding.

It's not the same script.

It's not even a

complete script design.

To

Dr. Rochelle Altman,

it seemed that the inscription

had been cobbled together

from bits of

genuine inscriptions.

She thought the first

part of the inscription,

James son of Joseph,

was probably authentic,

but that the brother of Jesus

had been added

later by another hand.

Ya'akov bar Yosef is original.

This is the ossuary of this man.

All of a sudden here's this,

and this is totally

different script,

it's made out of different

pieces and pasted together.

And that's exactly

what we have here.

This thing's obviously a fake.

(Reporter speaking in Hebrew)

With allegations

of fakery flying around,

the authorities

decided to crack down.

Police and Antiquities

Authority Agents

raided Oded Golan's home.

They found an

incriminating photograph

of the collector clutching

the missing Jehoash tablet,

which he had always

denied owning.

They made him hand it over

then confiscated the ossuary too.

The artifacts

and their collector

were about to be subjected

to intensive scrutiny.

The Israel Antiquities

Authority set up a task force

to decide on the

authenticity of both objects.

In charge of the

scientific investigation

was Professor Yuval

Goren of Tel Aviv University.

He began with the stone tablet.

He wanted to establish

whether it could have come

from the site of Solomon's

Temple on the Temple Mount.

The stone surface should

provide valuable clues.

Over time, all objects

develop a patina,

a thin crust bonded

to their surface.

It's created by

chemical reactions

between the object

and its environment.

But when Goren

examined the patina,

he found that it was

different on the front

and the back of the stone.

The patina on the

front did indeed appear

to come from Jerusalem,

but instead of being

bonded to the stone,

it lifted off quite easily.

The patina is very loosely

connected to the stone.

Here you can see

how it reacts to

me scraping it

with a matchstick.

And you can see that it

easily peels off the letters

as opposed, again, to

the patina on the backside.

The patina on

the back was different

and appeared not to

come from Jerusalem at all.

(hammer banging)

He concluded that

someone had taken

an old stone from somewhere else

and carved an

inscription on the front,

which had then been concealed

under a new artificial patina.

He could even see evidence

that the carving was recent.

When the letters are cleared,

the inner part of the

letters is exposed.

And as you can see

here, it is very freshly cut.

You can see

even the little lines,

the little parallel lines,

of either the chisel

or even maybe some

drill, some electric bit or drill

with which the

letters were engraved.

Which is, of course, very

unusual for ancient inscriptions.

And what of the ancient charcoal

and traces of gold which had

convinced earlier scientists?

Goren concluded they

had simply been added

to the artificial patina applied

to the front of the stone.

And, therefore, I

believe that the inscription

is not genuine.

Then he turned to

the Brother of Jesus Ossuary.

The bone box itself

appears to be genuine.

The stone was covered

by a chalky patina,

just what he'd expect if

it had spent many years

in an underground tomb.

But the patina in the grooves

of the inscription

was different.

Like the Jehoash tablet,

it was not firmly

bonded to the surface.

It looked as if the engraver

had cut through

the original patina,

then filled in the grooves

with a new material

to make it look ancient.

On June the 18th, 2003,

the Israel Antiquities

Authority goes public.

Both objects are declared fake.

Certainly that the

patina in the letters

in both items is

a modern forgery.

It hits the headlines worldwide.

Experts who

authenticated the artifacts

have their names

dragged through the mud.

It was manipulated.

It was really very,

very politicized.

For me, it's clear

it is not a forgery.

(soft mysterious music)

But more damning

evidence now comes to light.

When police and

authority inspectors

raid Oded Golan's

premises again,

they find engraving

tools, chemicals,

and soil samples taken

from sites all over Israel.

Together with

scores of artifacts,

many look freshly

minted or half-finished.

They confiscated several

tools that they had in my home.

These kind of tools

are existed in the hands

of any collector and

any dealer in Israel.

But the evidence leads to Golan

being charged on 15

counts of forgery and fraud.

Four other dealers are

accused of being accomplices.

I never forged

anything in my life.

Of course I shall

have to defend myself,

but I have nothing to

do with forgeries at all.

Three years on, the

prosecution of Oded Golan

on fraud and forgery

charges continues.

And there's still

no end in sight.

But whoever was responsible,

it seems a sophisticated

fraud is beginning to unravel.

The scandal has provoked

anxiety about every artifact

supposedly from biblical times

that has come from dealers

or sources unknown.

Could they all be forgeries?

Yuval Goren has

checked scores of items

that museums and collectors

have acquired on the market.

He has concluded that

almost all of them are fake.

Some archeologists believe

there's only one answer

to the problem.

The antiquity trade

should be shut down

and its products

should be shunned.

Objects must come from

an archeological excavation

done by archeologists.

Then they are genuine,

there's no question about them.

Then they are okay

and you can use them

for historical research.

Then whatever comes

from the market is forgery

until otherwise proven.

This is a country

where the antiquities market

has been thriving ever

since Medieval Crusaders

came hunting for holy relics.

Some shops are as old

as the antiquities they sell,

but in this city, the

buyer should beware

and assume that if

material isn't looted,

it's probably fake.

Though not in this

shop, of course.

Rami, Where do you

get your antiquities from?

(Rami sighing loudly)

Well, probably you should

ask my dad about this.

We, I inherited them

really from my family.

We used to get them

from the people that dig,

but not anymore.

Why not?

Not allowed, against

the rules here in Israel.

Not allowed to buy

from people that dig.

Whether an artifact

is genuine or looted or fake,

there are ways of

enhancing its market value.

The collectors always

want special things.

This is authentic jar.

This is from the Iron Age,

from the seventh century BC.

If it's ordinary jar

without any decoration

or inscription, it would

cost something between

700, 2,000 dollar.

But if someone add some

inscription here in ancient Hebrew,

it will be cost hundreds

of thousands of dollars.

Adding an

inscription is less work

and less expensive than

faking a whole artifact.

And as investigators have

uncovered more fakes,

they feel a pattern is emerging

of ancient objects being

embellished with inscriptions

to enhance their value

and historical significance.

(chisel banging)

They even have a

good idea how forgers

are producing inscriptions

good enough to fool the experts,

using a standard reference book

published by the Israel

Antiquities Authority.

Details of inscriptions

from genuine artifacts

are copied precisely

then reassembled

as the template

for a new engraving.

This is Ya'akov, James

in ancient Hebrew.

(air whooshing)

Next, son of Yosef.

(air whooshing)

To create brother of Jesus,

letters are taken from

several ancient sources

to complete the template.

James, son of Joseph,

brother of Jesus

and it looks

completely authentic.

(chisel banging)

Any artifact of unknown origin

with a compelling inscription

has now become suspect.

So it was inevitable that

attention would return

to that priceless object

in the Israel Museum,

the ivory pomegranate.

The pomegranate was

now the only item believed

to have survived from

Solomon's legendary Temple.

Over 25 years had passed

since the pomegranate

had first been authenticated

by one of the world's

experts on ancient inscriptions,

Professor Andre Lemaire.

Since then experts

have discovered

that it wasn't actually

made of elephant ivory,

but came from a

quite different beast.

(soft relaxing music)

It is a little pomegranate

made of a tooth

of a hippopotamus.

But the big question was,

did the pomegranate really

come from Solomon's Temple?

When professor Goren examined

the surface of the pomegranate,

he saw little to suggest that

it was not a genuine artifact.

You can see that it is old.

It is worn.

There were

signs of a few repairs,

traces of what looks like glue.

But the patina looked ancient.

Then he turned his

attention to the inscription.

(speaking in

Hebrew), which means

holy to the priests

of the House of God.

And this is why this pomegranate

was considered to be

from the Solomonic Temple.

But the pomegranate

was badly damaged

sometime in its history.

You can see that

the break that took off

about 1/3 of the body

of the pomegranate.

Most of the

inscription is intact,

but a large chunk is missing.

The letters that are supposed

to spell out House of God

are just fragments on

the border of the break.

It was these that

caught Goren's attention.

He noticed that the

grooves cut by the engraver

appeared to stop short of

the break, which was odd.

He would have expected

them to be sliced cleanly

when the pomegranate

was damaged.

The lines are ending

before the edge of the break,

which means that whoever

engraved it was very careful

not to make other

breaks into the old break.

It looked to Goren

as if the inscription

had been engraved

after the pomegranate

had been damaged.

It is clear when you look

at it through the microscope

that the inscription

was engraved in it,

on it, when it was

already broken.

So someone must

have added the inscription

to boost the

pomegranate's value.

It is probably a fake.

It's probably a forgery.

But Goren's

analysis makes no sense

to the pomegranate's

champion, Professor Lemaire.

He make a mistake

because it is not his field.

Although the pomegranate

is authentic, it is ancient,

the inscription was most

likely engraved in modern times.

Yuval Goren is

working out of his field.

And in this case,

when even if it is a

professor at university,

if somebody is

working out of his field,

out of his specialty, he is

not especially to be trusted.

But the man

who first authenticated

the pomegranate

now finds himself in

a very small minority.

The pomegranate has

been declared a fake

and removed from display

in the Israel Museum.

(horn blowing)

But there's no let up in

the sensational claims.

Jerusalem can prove a

nightmare for archeologists

with major monuments

of three religions

crowding on top of each other.

And in a quiet residential

quarter called Talpiot,

apartment blocks

overlook one of the most

contentious archeological

sites in the world.

In a tiny rose garden,

a large concrete slab

conceals the entrance

to a 2,000 year old tomb.

The crudely built

structure offers no clue

to the potential importance

of what lies beneath.

Cut into the rocky hillside,

the tomb was discovered

accidentally in 1980

when the whole area

was still a construction site.

Before it could disappear

under the new buildings,

a small team of archeologists

was allowed to examine

the tomb and its contents.

Among them was Shimon

Gibson, then 21 years old.

His job was to map

the inside of the tomb.

(insects buzzing)

(birds chirping)

Well under this cement

slab is a shaft which descends

for a couple of meters

down into the ground.

At the bottom of the

shaft is an opening,

which is situated here, which

leads into a barrel chamber,

which is still intact.

It's really nice.

After 27 years, the

tomb is still here.

The tomb itself was full of

soil at least up to knee level

at the time of excavation,

which meant that the door

had been opened in antiquity

and that soil had flowed

in to the cave itself.

So this wasn't an intact tomb.

Questions about

when it was broken into

have recently

ignited speculation

about what the tomb

originally contained.

Since they were discovered,

the ossuaries from the

tomb have been kept

at the Antiquities

Authority store.

And it was there 27

years later in 2007,

that the names

inscribed on the ossuaries

provoked intense

media speculation

about the occupants of the tomb.

Most of the names are well known

from the New

Testament of the Bible.

Mariame, a form of Mary,

Mary Magdalene perhaps.

Jose, a short form of Joseph.

Maria, another Mary.

And then most astonishing

of all, Yeshua bar Yosef,

Jesus son of Joseph.

Could this be the resting

place of Jesus Himself?

The suggestion that

this might be the tomb

of the family of Jesus

received worldwide publicity.

Now the man involved

in the original excavation

wants to examine the tomb again.

Anything which is sealed up

creates a kind of sort of

atmosphere of conspiracy.

So I think opening up the slab

and allowing cameras to go down

and to have a look at the

tomb would be a good thing.

Permission has been

given to examine the tomb,

but it soon becomes

clear that some residents

don't want an excavation

in their backyard.

(crowd murmuring in Hebrew)

An area which is

there's a lot of emotion.

It highlights the problems

that can arise for

archeologists in a country

where religious

passions run high.

He's going to call the police

that he doesn't

want us excavating.

And he's quite angry.

(crowd murmuring in Hebrew)

Pressing on now

could provoke a

worst disturbance,

so the Talpiot tomb

remains sealed.

But from the map Gibson drew

of the tomb when it was opened,

we can still get a good idea

of how the remains of

the family were laid out.

(soft mysterious music)

There were bones and

skulls lying on the floor.

The ossuaries lay

in small chambers

cut into the walls of the tomb.

The one bearing the

name Jesus son of Joseph

was one of the smallest,

tucked in the back

of one chamber.

Most archeologists

are very skeptical

that this could have

been Jesus of Nazareth.

One thing I can

tell you for certain,

and that is that there were

no remains of a crucified man

in this tomb.

And the

coincidence of the names,

however striking, fails

to impress specialists

in this period of history.

These names are extremely common

among the local Jewish

population in the time of Jesus.

It's also problematic because

everything that we know

about Jesus and His family

indicates that they were

a relatively poor family

who could not have

afforded a rock-cut tomb.

If they had owned

a rock-cut tomb,

presumably it would have been

in Nazareth, their hometown,

not in Jerusalem.

We have good evidence for this

from other wealthy

families around the country.

And while the

historical controversy rages,

some scientists think

it would be a good idea

to re-examine the ossuaries

that came from

the disturbed tomb.

American researchers

now want to subject them

to forensic-style scrutiny,

especially the

most controversial,

Jesus son of Joseph inscription.

Because it looks like

these scratches are new.

They wonder whether dirt

that's been impacted

in the inscription

could be concealing

signs of recent tampering.

We're actually trying to

remove some of the soil

that's been impacted in the

inscriptions and scratches.

Not only that, try to

remove the soil safely

as not to destroy any patina.

The grooves of the inscription

contain traces of mud,

which have to be removed

if they are to examine

the inscription in detail.

It seems that

Jesus son of Joseph

may not be the only

name engraved on the box.

It appears that the name Yeshua,

if this is the actual name,

because it's a very

difficult name to read,

is not the original

name on this ossuary.

Yeshua appears to be

super-inscribed over an earlier name

that appeared before that.

It could be something

like (speaking in Hebrew),

or a number of possibilities,

but Yeshua was not the

first one in the ossuary.

The name, Yeshua

bar Yosef, Jesus son of Joseph,

has been inscribed very crudely

and incorporates some of

the underlying inscription.

Could this have an

innocent explanation?

Or has Jesus being carved later

as a deliberate deception

by adding a few extra strokes,

then using mud to

make them look older?

It's coming. Patina

is coming away there.

Maybe you're right

about the mud here

that it was put as a

disguise, you know?

To cover up things, yeah.

The existence of this

hardened mud inside,

we have to look for some

explanation known for it,

'cause we don't really

have a good explanation yet.

But that's what we're

in the process of doing

is trying to figure out

if this hardened mud

was something that somebody

pressed into the inscription

in order to make it

look better or whatever.

It's not very clear yet.

So now you're starting

to get some of the patina away.

If we're able to remove

the mud successfully

without damaging

the inscription itself,

this would hope to at

least dispel any ideas

that this has any

problems in terms

of some kind of tampering.

Take some of that there.

An area that

we know has been perfected

by tape and the mud.

But these questions

are not likely to be

answered just yet.

Worried that removing the mud

might risk harming the

ossuary's delicate patina,

the Israel Antiquities

Authority has now called a halt

to further investigation.

But whatever the eventual

conclusions about tampering,

the scientists' concerns

are symptomatic

of the widespread

anxiety and alarm

caused by recent

revelations of fakery and fraud.

I do think that the

recent sensational claims

have made a mockery of

the discipline of archeology.

(soft ethereal music)

When a real and important

archeological find is made

the public are

unable to evaluate

whether it's true or false.

In a country where

three powerful religions

stake their claim to

be the heirs of history,

where believers will

seize on any evidence

that backs up their faith,

archeologists have a tough

job separating fiction from fact.

(soft upbeat music)

This matters a lot to us

if we ever want to

live in a real world,

because what we have is

fiction invading the real world.

It stains archeological

research, first of all.

It stains the known

reconstruction of biblical history.

And there is a whole, a

complete contamination

of our research.

And I think that we need to

make a statement against this.

As scores of fake artifacts

have been sold around the world,

academic reputations

have been trashed

and millions of dollars

have changed hands.

But it's not just museums

and wealthy collectors

who are being defrauded.

Distorting history has profound

consequences for everyone.

You know, you feel betrayed.

You feel that you were deceived.

It's one thing to

lie about something

that is not important to people

and it's something else to lie

about something that is

intrinsic to their identity.

(dramatic orchestral music)

(upbeat mysterious music)