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Ancient art.

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What’s to like?

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That it connects us to millennia of human
history?

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Eh.

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The excuse to look at a buncha butts and feel
like an intellectual?

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Ehh.

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How about the fact that tons of it’s fake,
and most of the people who own it don’t

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have a clue?

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That’s pretty fun!

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Ancient art forgeries aren’t just the stuff
of blatant eBay scams.

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They’re the stuff of—for example—the
Met, which we know because former Met director

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and knockoff Inspector Gadget Thomas Hoving
said so.

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Specifically, he said that 40% of the art
he came across in his time there was probably

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fake.

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So basically, fake art is to the biggest,
most well-funded collectors and institutions

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in the world as phishing emails are to your
inbox—the only difference is that those

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fancy art people are clicking the link.

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But how is this such a big thing?

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First off, there’s loads of money in the
art world, meaning a good fake can fetch millions.

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And ancient art is actually pretty great for
faking: While there are forgeries in every

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corner of the art market, ancient artifacts
are mostly fetching delicious mid-market prices,

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which are perfect.

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Think about it: if you were to forge at the
high end—a multi-million dollar Van Gogh

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or something—people might bother with the
due diligence.

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If you were to mess around in the low end—trying
to rip off my frog sculptures—you wouldn’t

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make enough money for it to be worthwhile.

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Also, with ancient art you don’t have to
do the hands.

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Hands are really hard.

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All this means it’s way more common to forge
ancient art than most people think, but it’s

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not way easier.

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Good forgers are as crafty as they are, well,
crafty, and their combination of artistic

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ability and scientific savvy has managed to
keep the fun police on their toes for generations.

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The first ancient art forgers were…

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other ancient artists.

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Ancient Phoenecians faked Egyptian stuff with
gibberish hieroglyphs, and the so-called precious

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gems in King Tut’s tomb are just ancient
colored glass.

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Yep, even Tut got tricked.

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That’s why nine-year-olds shouldn’t be
pharaoh, and you can quote me on that.

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So people have been faking artifacts forever,
and getting very good at it.

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They know which materials are easiest to get
away with: stone is one, because if you can

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source it from the right place, it’ll pass
every compositional test and you’ll only

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get caught if you’re a subpar sculptor.

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Gold is great too, because it doesn’t corrode,
making it easier to fake age it than, say,

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bronze, which ages in layers of cupric chloride,
brown patina, and crystal cupric oxide.

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They also know to replicate ancient production
techniques, like making black paint by burning

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olive oil rather than using the Crayola stuff.

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Once a scam artist makes the fakes, they age
them.

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That can mean anything from chucking them
in an acid pit for a month to burying them

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underground and planting basil on top to give
it root markings.

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They’ll also sometimes break and repair
the pieces, feigning a lifetime of use.

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But remember: this is a game of cat and mouse,
and the cats have tons of ways to spot forgeries.

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Sometimes it’s as simple as finding an impossibility:
a Qatari Sheikh paid five or six figures for

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this “fifth century” unfired clay head,
even though an unfired clay head still looking

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like a head after sixteen hundred years is
about as likely as your head still looking

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like a head in sixteen hundred years: not
very, unless there’s cryogenics involved.

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The pros also spot fakes from tiny stylistic
anachronisms.

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Like, if you’re going to pass a human statue
off as ancient Greek, it can’t have real

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human proportions—they constructed their
human figures to a mathematical ideal of perfection.

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Not enough torso, and you can count it out.

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This is also how they cast Love Island, but
that’s another video.

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Fakehunters also look at the wear and tear.

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Some artifacts, like this tiara, are suspected
fake because all their damage is suspiciously

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located on unimportant, non-protruding parts
of the piece.

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Fun police need a sharp eye for all this and
more—or a sharp nose.

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In the 1800s, Egyptian art expert T.G.

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Wakeling insisted he could smell the ancientness
of Egyptian wood, which was really effective

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for weeding out fakes… until forgers started
buying up peasant mummies, boiling them, and

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dumping the juice onto their stuff to cheat
his nose, which is a clever trick, but a waste

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of perfectly good peasant juice!

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What am I supposed to moisturize with now?

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Peasant… blood??

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Once someone suspects a fake, there are a
bunch of sciencey ways to check whether it’s

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really as old as it’s cracked up to be.

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Under UV light, legitimately old marble will
glow yellow due to centuries of sun exposure,

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while younger marble will glow more purple.

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For anything that used to be alive—like
wood, fibers, bone, whatever—you can radiocarbon

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date it by seeing how much of the Carbon 14
isotope is kicking around.

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That’ll tell you when the material was harvested,
though not necessarily when it was made into

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a little horsey.

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For other materials, they do compositional
analyses with X-Rays which can show—among

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other things—exactly where a piece of rock
came from.

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If it’s not the same place the alleged ancient
artists got their rocks from, that’s probably

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a fake.

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They even analyze the patina, or the buildup
of dirt and grime on the piece.

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Forgies often attach patina with an artificial
binder, while real old stuff is just genuinely

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grimy—like a dorm shower, or Elon Musk…
well, before the breakup, I guess.

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But despite all these fake-spotting tools,
forgeries are still everywhere.

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In that guy’s book, which came out in 1997,
he names a bunch of things at famous museums

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that he thinks are fake, and tons of them
are still on display!

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There are even fakes in this video—those
weren’t my frog sculptures, one of my dumb

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writers is just starting a side hustle!

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What gives?

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Turns out, for all the incentive to make a
fake, there’s very little incentive to spot

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one.

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Why would an owner want to know they got duped?

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Why would a seller check if their stuff’s
fake, as long as it’s fetching real prices?

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The logic goes that what you don’t know
can’t embarrass you… which is totally

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true except in the cases of open fly, spinach
in teeth, and most other facets of being alive.

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But remember: the art industry is run by and
for people who pay exorbitant sums to appear

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wealthy and cultured, and any art—even fake
art—that keeps up that appearance is doing

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its job.

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Are we really shocked these folks bop mediocre
stuff around in hopes that everyone will just

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assume it’s legit?

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It’s sort of their whole thing.

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So you know what?

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Go whip up some ancient art!

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Scam a rich clown!

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It’s not legal, but it is funny, and that’s
so much more important.

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Since ancient times—I assume, I’m not
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can order delivery but then you’re paying
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