In Plate II are shown some interesting forged gold antiques. The necklace (No. 2) was bought by a lady in Algiers. It was represented to have been brought from Egypt, and was said to be composed of Egyptian scarabs made of precious stones and mounted in gold filigree work. The price paid for it was £16. Examination showed that the scarabs were composed of coloured glass, very badly cut, and the setting was merely silver gilt. The real value was under ten shillings.
No. 1 shows a combination necklace composed of genuine old carnelian beads and spurious gold bottles. This was a fashionable form of necklace in the ancient days, and the present specimen is extremely well calculated to take in the unwary. The price asked for it was £18. The man had two others of a somewhat different design with him. The prices were £12 and £6 respectively. In each case the beads were old, and the gold had been covered with a kind of lacquer which gave it the appearance of age. So clever were the gold imitations that at first I really thought that they were real, and proceeded to bargain for them. We did not agree upon a price for the two largest necklaces, but I bought the smaller one (No. 4) for twelve shillings.
No. 3 is a bracelet made up of imitation scarabs set in real gold of a low carat.
The seller also showed me a heavy gold ring, fashioned like the ring of Akhnaton, but lacking an inscription on the face of it. For this he asked £8, but I remembered a tale told me by an excavator to the effect that in December of 1900 a man of Qus took a gold ring to his camp at Derr-el-Ballas. On the face was the name of an eighteenth-dynasty queen. Careful examination showed that the ring was a forgery. Four months later the excavator saw the same ring in the shop of a dealer in Luxor, who had paid £5 for it, and this made me cautious. The following day the man returned with a friend, and again we proceeded to bargain for the two large necklaces. Hamid Ibrahim, to whom I am much indebted for his assistance, and in whose shop the transaction was taking place, was suspicious and uneasy. Time after time he examined the necklaces with a powerful magnifying glass. The men watched him calmly, never showing by the quiver of an eyelid that they minded his examining them as much as he liked. We had narrowed the transaction down until now there was little separating us in price, when again Ibrahim took up the bottle necklace, and began looking at it with his glass. Suddenly he made a quick movement which I understood at once, and then he laid the necklace down. Silently he handed me the glass, and pointed out a bottle. I took up the necklace, and there on the bottle he had indicated, was a very fine line where the gold had been folded over. I handed the necklace back to Ibrahim, who took a needle and ran it along underneath the edge of the gold, which he thus turned back. Then we saw that it was no thicker than a sheet of thin paper, while the bottles had been cast in plaster of Paris, and the gold foil very cleverly folded over them. I did not buy the necklaces, but I obtained the loan of one of them (No. 2, [Plate II]).
As I have said, the men made no objection to our examination of the bottles. They looked us frankly in the face; they would have cheated us if they could, but they had failed. They did not consider that they were in any way to blame for their attempt. They told us frankly, after we had found them out, that the gold forgeries were all made by one man, who was such a wonderful artist that he had been offered a high rate of pay to go to Europe to work there, but that he had refused. It is certain that more will be heard of this man’s work, for, said my informant, “There is no one in the world so clever as he is in making gold imitations.”
I have purposely refrained from describing the gold forgeries made and sold by Europeans in Egypt, preferring to keep entirely to the Egyptians and their work.
CHAPTER III
LAPIS LAZULI FIGURES AND
IRIDESCENT GLASS
Genuine lapis lazuli figures are extremely rare, and generally small, the most valuable ones in the museums being only a few inches high. It was thought at first that it would be impossible to make imitations which would pass for the real stone, but on the demand arising it has been met.
I was riding from Deir-el-Bahari down to the river one day when a youth rose up from the side of the road, and shuffled forward to speak to me.