Examples of Papyrus forgeries

Papyrus fragment of Bion of Smyrna analyzed as modern, though written on ancient papayrus by C. Gallazzi.

Claudio Gallazzi, “Un papiro falso con un frammento di Bione, cm.6.4 ×4.3,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 34 (1979): 55-58.

 

Footnote 106 (devoted to illustrious forgeries) of  article by Pierluigi Piovanelli of the University of Ottawa in Burke’s volume Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery?, p. 183.

(… on) the Artemidorus Papyrus (attributed to the Greek forger Constantine Simonides [1820-1867?]) (… see) Luciano Canfora, The True History of the So-called Artemidorus Papyrus (Bari: Edizioni di Pagina, 2007); idem, Il viaggio di Artemidoro. Vita e avventure di un grande esploratore dell’antichità (Milan: Rizzoli, 2010); idem, La meravigliosa storia del falso Artemidoro, La memoria 855 (Palermo: Sellerio, 2011); Kai Brodersen and Jaś Elsner, eds., Images and Texts on the “Artemidorus Papyrus”: Working Papers on P.Artemid. (St. John’s College Oxford, 2008), Historia, Einzelschriften 214 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2009); Federico Condello, “ ‘Artemidoro’ 2006-2011: l’ultima vita, in breve,” Quaderni di storia 74 (2011) 161-248 (kindly brought to my attention by Claudio Zamagni) (…).

https://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/2014/05/papyrus-forgeries.html

 

J. K. Elliott has written the Simonides story, full of primary-source references from the 19th century in a volume hard to find but fascinating:  Codex Sinaiticus and the Simonides Affair:  An Examination of the Nineteenth Century Claim tht Codex Sinaiticus Was Not an Ancient Manuscript (Thessaloniki:  Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1982).

What makes Simonides’ claim so interesting is that he did in fact produce a number of fake ancient manuscripts that, for a good while, fooled a good many people.  In the section, “Simonides the Forger” (pp. 122-72), Elliott itemizes major examples of Simonides’ work.  These include a purported first-century papyrus roll containing part of 1 John and 2-3 John, a “History of the Kings of Egypt up to the Reign of Ptolemy Lagus” by a “Uranius of Alexandria” (which received widespread attention in various countries, initially accepted as genuine in Leipzig and then rejected), a purported early manuscript of Hermas, plus Simonides’ claimed discovery of important biblical manuscripts in Mayer’s museum in Liverpool (portions of Matthew and epistles of James and Jude on papyrus purportedly from the lst century), as well as other forgeries.

A Master Hoaxer: Constantine Simonides

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