Apart from the fact that the strips could not have enwrapped a mummy, as neither Hebrews nor Phœnicians had the custom of embalming their dead, the leather said to have been found in Palestine could hardly have withstood for so long the action of a damp climate. Such preservation would only be possible in the dry climate of the desert or some one of the favoured parts of Egypt.
It was discovered at the same time that the strips of the famous manuscript had been cut from a piece of leather some two centuries old—the erased original characters still being traceable—upon which the Biblical fragments had been copied in the Moabite alphabet.
The artist with a vaster range and wider scope for duping is, without doubt, the one working on artistic frauds, as the proportion stands at one collector of manuscripts to a thousand art collectors. It is immaterial to him whether he meets specialists or eclectics in this large field—they are all good game. The facility with which he is thus able to dispose of his wares makes him still more refractory to reform. Silent, often obscure, always mysterious, he claims for his activity what must appear to him a noble justification: he paradoxically believes himself to be a real factor of his client’s happiness. But for him some of the collectors would find it tremendously difficult to possess masterpieces, and if they die happy without realizing that they have been fooled, where is the difference?
After all, in this fool’s paradise they are happy and undisturbed—so very few realize either that they have been totally duped by a fake or partially cheated by over-restoration. Most of the modern collectors too often resemble that type of art lover:
... Qui croit tenir les pommes d’Hesperides
Et presse tendrement un navet sur son coeur.[2]
.. : Who thinks he holds the apples of the Hesperides
Whilst pressing tenderly a turnip to his heart.