Zandar's Saga 598

I'm sure Wadi knows a couple of good undiscovered tombs to show these guys.

love Wadis attitude in this XD

Rick2tails

Finding it inside the wrappings of a mummy you found in a previously undiscovered tomb, is a pretty good clue to it's being authentic.

Wm. Van Ness

How can you tell a real artifact from a fake artifact? With great difficulty. Authentication requires a large bundle of specialized skills. One approach is art historical. Artifacts produced by any given societies have various stylistic markers. Ceramic pots have certain distinctive shapes, paintings employ certain motifs, metal work is done in various ways, and so on. By paying close attention to the style of an artifact, one may be able to rule out the authenticity of an item. However, since all of that stylistic stuff is knowable, it’s reproducible by a sufficiently skilled forger. The other approach is physical. Those societies also used a limited range of techniques and materials, and aging is likely to cause distinctive changes over time. These may be investigated with chemical tests, microscopic analysis, and so on. These are trickier to fake, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. The textbook example of how this can go wrong is the Getty Kouros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_kouros . Back in the 80s, the Getty museum as approached by an antiquities dealer offering them a statue of a rare type. There were some warning flags related to the style of the artifact, but nothing absolutely ruling out authenticity. So they performed some chemical tests. Scientists examining the statue determined that the kind of weathering found on other statues of the same age and material as the kouros was chemically identical to that on the kouros itself. The Getty bought the statue. Not long thereafter, someone published a paper describing how to artificially create identical weathering. It’s generally regarded as a fake these days, but the Getty bought it because the forger was, at the time, scientifically one step ahead of everybody else. So, then, it’s nearly impossible to reliably prove that an artifact is authentic. The best you can do is apply a number of tests and fail to prove it’s a fake.

Simone Spinozzi

But the "Welcome to Persheshthet" sign was put up by the Chamber of Commerce during the XXIIth Dynasty. You mean the Chamber of Commerce can't be trusted??

Walter Reimer

Well, I did, but that's OK. Life happens.

Major Matt Mason

the winds appear to be picking up...

Runei Stillwater