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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 8348566, member: 128351&quot;]In Israel, the antiquities business is a real industry. There are the legal registered dealers who have shops in Jerusalem, the unregistered dealers (who provide merchandise to the registered ones or to other ones in UK or Canada), the transformation workshops where coins and objects are cleaned and nice black/orange desert patinas are applied, where biblical rings and pendants with authentic widow&#039;s mites, procuratorial lepta or LRB, are made, there are the forgers too, who produce all kinds of fakes from the $10 tourist fake to elaborate biblical inscriptions on ossuaries or ancient papyrus fragments imported from Egypt - good work that can fool some private museum curators. Lost in the middle of all this, the poor IAA (Israel Antiquities Authority) has little authority, actually. Ilan Haddad, quoted in the Times of Israel article, is right when he says he is facing a &quot;maffia&quot;. The antiquities business in Israel has an enormous turnover and the &quot;big fish&quot; are protected by powerful influential people interested in rare and valuable antiquities. This Israeli antiquities market is so active that it drains looted antiquities from neighbouring countries: not only the West Bank but also Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Egypt. Exceptional objects that had been excavated by archaeologists in Jordan, one of which was supposed to be secured in Amman&#039;s Department of Antiquities, surfaced some years later in the London collection of a wealthy Israeli collector.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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