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SHAPIRA, M

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Originally appearing in Volume V24, Page 804 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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SHAPIRA, M . W. (c. 1830-1884), See also:Polish vendor of See also:spurious antiquities, was of Jewish See also:birth, but appears to have become a See also:Christian See also:early in See also:life. He opened a See also:shop for the See also:sale of antiquities in See also:Palestine, and after the See also:discovery of the Moabite See also:Stone in 1872 was successful in selling to the Prussian See also:government for 20,000 thaler a number of alleged pieces of Moabite pottery. These were shown by Clermont-Ganneau and others (cf. Kautzsch and A. Socin, Achtheit der moabitischen Altertumer, 1876) to be forgeries produced by Shapira's client See also:Selim al-Kari. Undeterred by this exposure, Shapira continued to do a considerable See also:trade especially in See also:Hebrew See also:MSS. from See also:Yemen, but ultimately ruined himself by a See also:fraud perpetrated upon the See also:British Museum. In 1883 he offered, for the See also:price, it is said, of £1,000,000, a number of See also:leather strips containing speeches of See also:Moses varying in many particulars from, though similar in See also:matter to, those in See also:Deuteronomy, and written in archaic Hebrew characters. He pretended that he had obtained them from a Bedouin who had discovered them in a Moabite See also:cave. The fragments were submitted to C.

D. See also:

Ginsburg, who published See also:translations in The Times of Aug. 4, 17, 22, 1883. The See also:French government, however, sent over Clermont-Ganneau to investigate, and, though the British Museum authorities declined to give him permission to make a See also:complete study, he satisfied himself from a few strips which were publicly exhibited that the whole collection must be a See also:forgery (The Times, Aug. 15). This view was See also:con-firmed by Ginsburg's See also:report to the Museum. Shapira, who was never shown to have been the actual forger, committed See also:suicide in See also:Rotterdam on the 1 rth of See also:March 1884. For the fragments see Guthe, Fragmenta einer Lederhandschrift (See also:Leipzig, 1884) ; see also Clermont-Ganneau, See also:Les Fraudes archeologiques (See also:Paris, 1885), iii., iv.

End of Article: SHAPIRA, M

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