Original subtitles

(film reel clicking)

(tense music)

- [Narrator] In recent years,

a series of extraordinary finds

has been made in the Holy Land.

These astonishing discoveries

are linked to some of the most famous events in the Bible.

(ethereal vocalizing)

They appear to be new evidence for the burial of Jesus.

And for the legendary Temple of Solomon.

- This is something that biblical scholars

have been waiting for, have been dreaming of for many years.

- Here is a proof, we can touch it,

we can we can smell it, we can go see it.

This is where we came from.

- It's an earthquake, a revolution.

- [Narrator] Or is there another darker story

behind these mysterious objects?

(dramatic music)

Jerusalem, the Holy Land's most important city.

For centuries, it's been the center

of a flourishing antiquity trade.

Government inspectors try to monitor the trade,

but thousands of artifacts change hands here every day.

Genuine pieces, 2,000 or more years old,

can be bought for a few hundred dollars.

And many collectors have learned

not to ask awkward questions

about how the dealer came by them.

And it was here, more than 25 years ago,

in Jerusalem's antiquity market,

that one of the most remarkable artifacts

in the Holy Land's history first came to light.

(peaceful music)

It was a tiny object, just four centimeters long,

badly damaged, and no one knew where it came from,

but it would be hailed as a unique piece of history.

It became known as the ivory pomegranate.

It was thought to be the ornamental tip

of a priest's ceremonial staff.

But what most amazed the experts was the inscription.

(speaking in foreign language)

Holy to the priests of the house of God.

It's suggested that this exquisite little ornament

was used by priests in the first temple of Jerusalem,

which according to the Bible, was built by King Solomon.

If the pomegranate was what its inscription claimed,

it was a revolutionary find.

Before it came to light, there was no independent evidence

apart from the Bible

that Solomon's Temple had actually existed.

3,000 years ago, Jerusalem was a small Iron Age city

whose ambitious king, the Bible tells us,

decided to build a house for his God.

- [Narrator] In the four year

of Solomon's reign over Israel,

the construction of the Temple Of the Lord was begun.

- [Narrator] The existence of Solomon's Temple

is central to traditional Jewish belief.

- [Narrator] The house which King Solomon

built for the Lord,

the length thereof was three score cubits,

the breadth thereof 20 cubits,

and the height thereof 30 cubits.

- [Narrator] Over 12 meters high and over 30 meters long,

the house of God would have dominated

the city and its people.

Since then, Jerusalem has suffered

nearly 2,500 years of turbulent history.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims all claim a stake

in the city that features so large

in the history of their faiths.

A vast Muslim shrine, the dome of the rock,

now occupies the site where Solomon's Temple

is presumed to have stood.

According to biblical history,

the temple was destroyed by fire

in 586 BC by invaders from Babylon.

(speaking in foreign language)

The Western Wall where Jewish pilgrims now come to pray

is all that's left of a second temple

built on the same site as Solomon's Temple

by King Herod the Great, 500 years later.

In a country where cultural and territorial rites

are the essence of politics, the story of Solomon's Temple

has special significance for the Jews.

But there's no trace of the temple itself

and archaeologists are not allowed to dig

in such a politically sensitive area.

Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein

has amassed thousands of artifacts

from that period of history, but not a fragment of evidence

to back up the Bible's account of Solomon's Temple.

- There's no archeological evidence for the simple reason

that we cannot excavate in the Temple Mount.

I think also that even if it was possible

to do something on the Temple Mount,

there's big question whether we could have discovered

anything from the first temple of biblical times

because there was a huge building operation there

in the time of Herod the Great and there is good reason

to think that everything was eradicated.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] So, the pomegranate was an extraordinary find.

The tiny artifact with a large chip on one side

was the first physical link to the lost Temple of Solomon.

(dramatic music)

But was the pomegranate authentic?

In Israel, many ancient objects find their way

onto the market from dubious sources.

Just beyond the walls of the old city of Jerusalem,

Amir Ganor, chief investigator

for the Israel Antiquities Authority,

is checking an underground tomb from the time of Jesus,

the first century AD.

(tense music)

Israel has thousands of ancient historic sites.

Many are untouched and still contain

valuable artifacts from biblical times.

But all too often,

when archaeologists arrive to explore them,

they find that looters have beaten them to it.

- This is only one of thousands of caves

that we have here in this area.

And unfortunately most of them are looted.

You could see the damage that they done here,

they took everything, they destroyed this tomb.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The Holy Land's heritage

is being plundered for cash.

- We assume that 95% of the antiquities

that now in the hands of the dealers,

they are stolen property or they looted.

- [Narrator] Most of the loot

is brought to the Jerusalem market

where the ivory pomegranate first appeared.

The man who came across it in the Jerusalem market

happened to be one of the world's leading experts

on ancient inscriptions, Professor Andre Lemaire.

- One of the sellers told me,

I know an inscription which belongs to somebody else

and will you be interested to see?

- [Narrator] He examined it closely.

- It is a very small object, you have to be aware

that it is only about four centimeters high.

And the inscription is still smaller of course.

And looking at it very carefully,

I found that from what I could see,

everything was okay, there was no problem.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] After inspecting the engraved Aramaic text,

Lemaire had no doubt it was genuine.

He published his report, declaring it to be authentic

from the eighth century BC, the time of Solomon's Temple.

(dramatic music)

A tiny pomegranate would have played a humble part

in the magnificent temple.

It would have been carried on processions

through the two great halls,

whose walls were paneled in sweet smelling cedar wood.

If the pomegranate belonged to one of the high priests,

it would have accompanied him

into the temple's inner sanctum, the holy of holies,

where winged cherubim guarded the Ark of the Covenant

and the towering walls were encrusted with gold.

But however humble its role might have been then,

it was now the only artifact to survive from the temple.

The Israel Museum, home to a world-renowned collection

of biblical artifacts, was now very keen to acquire it.

- It was an object of some excitement

because when first identified,

it was considered that it might be an object

directly connected to the first temple, to Solomon's Temple.

And we really have very little material

that comes from that period from Jerusalem

and that can be directly connected

to that moment in history

and to the physical existence of the temple.

- [Narrator] But when the museum

tried to track down the owner, it ran into a wall.

The pomegranate had already changed hands.

There wasn't a dealer in Israel

who seemed to know where it was.

The word was it had been smuggled out of the country.

(somber music)

Then, several years later in 1987, out of the blue,

the museum received a mysterious phone call.

(speaking in foreign language)

The pomegranate was now available, but at a price.

- He wants $1 million.

- [Narrator] Desperate to get their hands

on this unique piece of Jewish heritage,

the museum bartered the price down

to just over half a million dollars in cash.

Israel's leading expert was asked to check it out.

When he, too, decided it was genuine,

the cash, provided by an anonymous donor,

was paid into an anonymous Swiss bank account.

The pomegranate was returned to Jerusalem.

And there in the Israel Museum,

along with such priceless national treasures

as the dead sea scrolls, it was given pride of place,

an authentic link to King Solomon's Temple.

(gentle music)

For nearly 20 years, it was regarded

as the only physical evidence for the temple.

Then, in uncannily similar circumstances,

another extraordinary artifact became headline news.

In 2002, the chief investigator

for the Israel Antiquities Authority, Amir Ganor,

was given a special mission to track down

a brand new piece of biblical history

that had gone missing.

It was a hunt that would take him

the length and breadth of the country.

And provide a major scoop

for a young Israeli newspaper reporter.

- The story begins in 2001.

A professor from the Jerusalem University

receives a call from a mysterious person

who refuses to give his real name

and asks this professor to come to a hotel in Jerusalem.

He arrives with another professor,

he received another call saying,

we are changing the location of the meeting,

please take a taxi to a different hotel.

(tense music)

A person who he has never met before

arrives with a briefcase.

- [Narrator] The man with the briefcase

claimed to be acting on behalf of a client.

He couldn't reveal his client's identity,

but was sure the professors would be very interested

by what he had brought to show them.

- [Boaz] He opens up the briefcase,

takes out a gorgeous piece of black stone

with a ancient writing on it

and asks the two professors to authenticate the piece.

- [Narrator] The inscription on the shiny black stone

described repairs made to the Temple of Solomon

by a king called Jehoash in the eighth century BC.

If it was genuine, it was priceless.

Like the ivory pomegranate, it appeared to confirm

that Solomon's Temple had actually existed.

Better still, it provided unique confirmation

of events described in the Old Testament.

The professors wanted to know who the owner was

and where the object had come from.

(speaking in foreign language)

All the stranger would reveal

was that it had been found near the Temple Mount.

- They wanted to take the stone, they wanted to, you know,

perform a thorough investigation of it

and to authenticate it or reveal it as a forgery.

The person refused, of course, to give the stone,

said that's impossible, because of, you know, complications.

- [Narrator] There was no way the professors

could properly authenticate the tablet

after such a brief examination.

- You know, he takes the stone,

he puts it back in his briefcase, he says,

thank you very much to the two bewildered professors,

and leaves them behind in the Jerusalem lobby.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] The place where the tablet

had allegedly been found

was at the foot of the Temple Mount,

the heart of old Jerusalem, where according to legend,

Solomon's Temple once stood.

But how could anyone be sure that a blackened stone

allegedly found in a pile of rubble

was a genuine 3,000-year-old relic?

The owner, whoever he was, realized this,

but shortly afterwards, other experts

were secretly approached by intermediaries

and asked if they could authenticate the tablet.

One of them, geologist Amnon Rosenfeld,

has spent his working life

studying the rocks around Jerusalem

used by masons and engravers in biblical times.

- We were asked to examine something

that should be kept secret, called the Jehoash Tablet.

Our starting point was that this is a fake

and we should find some signature of a forgery.

- [Narrator] Dr. Rosenfeld and his colleagues

were allowed to examine the stone over several months

in his lab at the Geological Survey Of Israel.

- We couldn't find anything

that lead us to the conclusions that it's a forgery.

We find many criteria that point out

that it might be an authentic inscription.

- [Narrator] If the tablet was genuine,

it was precisely what Jewish archaeologists

had been seeking for ages.

- I was very excited because this type of inscription

is something that biblical scholars have been waiting for,

have been hoping for, have been dreaming of for many years.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The inscription on the tablet

corroborated the Bible's account

of how King Jehoash decided to refurbish the temple.

The book of Kings tells us

that repairs were needed to the building,

which would by them would have been over 100 years old.

- Each from his benefactor.

They, in turn, shall strengthen the damage in the house

wherever damage may be found.

- [Narrator] And this is how the tablet

records those events.

- I repaired the construction

and I made the repairs in the temple

and the walls all around and the side buildings

and the lattice work and the trap doors

and the recesses in the doors.

And I think that was speaking about the same royal act

of repairs in the temple.

And the language is also rather similar.

- [Narrator] Meanwhile, analysis of the tablet

by the scientists had revealed more.

They found the surface contained tiny flecks of charcoal,

which proved to be over 2,000 years old.

And they found tiny specks of gold,

just what might be expected if it had survived a fire

when the gold encrusted Temple of Solomon was destroyed.

(speaking in foreign language)

The astonishing revelation was widely regarded

as proof that the tablet was genuine.

- Everyone was dumbfounded by the discovery of an,

it was like a you know an alien spacecraft

landing in the middle of Jerusalem.

Here is a stone with an inscription

that is actually quoted from the Jewish Bible

and that proves that a Jewish temple

actually stood in Jerusalem.

Here is a proof that our national heritage is,

can be basically, you know, we can touch it,

we can we can smell it, we can go see it,

we can take our children, this is where we came from.

- [Narrator] The Israel Antiquities Authority

urgently wanted to know how the owner, whoever he was,

had come by such an artifact

of national and historical significance.

(speaking in foreign language)

Amir Ganor, the authority's chief investigator,

pumped his contacts in the market for information.

He suspected it had been illegally looted.

But the word on the street told a different story,

as journalist Boaz Gaon soon discovered.

- I traveled to Jerusalem and started to dig there

and try and find out who the owner of this new tablet is.

And the people in the antique industry who,

you know, do not like to expose their identity, was,

they told me straight away that they think it's a hoax.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Whether it was a hoax or loot

or the genuine article, Amir Ganor was determined

to track down the owner and the tablet itself,

which had now disappeared again.

He had many rumors to follow,

but it would take a long time to get a clear picture.

- We spent three months on the road,

to try to find this tablet.

The months of detective work finally led him to Tel Aviv,

Israel's modern commercial capital.

And in a fashionable residential quarter,

to the home of a businessman,

one of Israel's leading antiquity collectors, Oded Golan.

Golan has been collecting ancient artifacts

since he was a boy.

- Here you are looking now at the oldest,

the most ancient dictionary ever found in the world.

I found it when I was 10 years old.

- [Narrator] He admitted he'd been helping

to sell the missing stone tablet,

but denied that he had ever been its owner.

- He was a dealer, Palestinian dealer,

who had a shop in East Jerusalem.

Abu Yasser was his nickname.

I didn't have enough money to buy it,

and he asked me if I can help him to sell it

or to offer it to somebody

and I had actually only one condition,

it should stay in the museum for the public.

- [Interviewer] But how much was he asking for it?

- Several hundred thousands of dollars.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] But the authorities

were not convinced by the story.

And what made them highly suspicious

was that the same collector, Oded Golan,

had recently been involved in another sensational discovery

that had suddenly appeared.

In the vast collection of ancient treasures

held by the Israel Antiquities Authority,

there are hundreds of stone boxes,

all dating back to the time of Jesus.

Simply engraved, some bearing a name in Hebrew or Greek,

they had a macabre purpose, they are ossuaries,

receptacles for storing the bones of the dead.

In 2002, one of these ancient bone boxes

became the center of worldwide media attention.

(speaking in foreign language)

The inscription translates as

James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.

For these familiar names from the New Testament

to appear together seemed a remarkable coincidence.

The ancient bone box was hailed

as the final resting place of Saint James,

the brother of Jesus of Nazareth,

and the first archeological evidence

linked to Jesus himself.

It caused a sensation

and was viewed by nearly 100,000 people

at the Royal Ontario museum in Toronto.

Another extraordinary biblical artifact

and its owner was Oded Golan.

- Two dramatic artifacts were discovered

in the space of six months by the same collector?

This was very, very difficult to believe,

I mean, you know, what's next?

The shoes of Mohammed?

- I have to admit it did sound quite strange,

but if you have the good contacts, the good relationship,

you get the good stuff, it's very simple.

- [Narrator] He claimed he had owned the ossuary for years.

- In the mid '70s I bought several ossuaries,

actually three, and I bought it in East Jerusalem.

- [Narrator] So, why had it taken him 30 years

to realize the possible significance of the inscription?

- The first person who actually gave me the idea

that it could belong to the family of Jesus Christ

was Professor Andre Lemaire.

- [Narrator] Back in the 1980s,

Professor Lemaire had been responsible

for authenticating the ivory pomegranate.

20 years later, his reputation as an expert

in ancient inscriptions proved valuable to Oded Golan.

- I was amazed with the name,

but mainly with the appellation brother of Yeshua,

James, the brother of Jesus.

For me there is no problem

about the fact that the inscription is genuine.

- [Narrator] Professor Lemaire's opinion

that the inscription was genuine

transformed the brother of Jesus ossuary

into an archeological sensation,

but not every expert was convinced

that the inscription was authentic.

- I laughed.

I couldn't believe it, you've gotta be kidding,

it's not the same script.

It's not even a complete script design.

- [Narrator] To Dr. Rochelle Altman,

it seemed that the inscription had been cobbled together

from bits of genuine inscriptions.

She thought that the first part of the inscription,

James, son of Joseph, was probably authentic,

but that the brother of Jesus

had been added later by another hand.

(speaks in foreign language)

- Is original.

This is the ossuary of this man.

And all of a sudden here's this

and this is totally different script,

it's made out of different pieces and pasted together.

And that's exactly what we have here.

This thing's obviously a fake.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] With allegations of fakery flying around,

the authorities decided to crack down.

Police and antiquities authority agents

raided Oded Golan's home.

They found an incriminating photograph

of the collector clutching the missing Jehoash tablet,

which he'd always denied owning.

(sullen music)

They made him hand it over,

then confiscated the ossuary too.

The artifacts and their collector

were about to be subjected to intensive scrutiny.

(tense music)

The Israel Antiquities Authority set up a task force

to decide on the authenticity of both objects.

In charge of the scientific investigation

was Professor Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University.

He began with the stone tablet.

He wanted to establish whether it could have come

from the site of Solomon's Temple on the Temple Mount.

The stone's surface should provide valuable clues.

Over time, all objects develop a patina,

a thin crust bonded to their surface.

It's created by chemical reactions

between the object and its environment.

But when Goren examined the patina,

he found that it was different

on the front and the back of the stone.

The patina on the front

did indeed appear to come from Jerusalem,

but instead of being bonded to the stone,

it lifted off quite easily.

- The patina is very loosely connected to the stone.

Here you can see how it reacts

to me scraping it with a match stick,

and you can see that it easily peels off the letters

as opposed, again, to the patina on the back side.

- [Narrator] The patina on the back was different

and appeared not to come from Jerusalem at all.

He concluded that someone had taken an old stone

from somewhere else and carved an inscription on the front,

which had then been concealed under new artificial patina.

He could even see evidence that the carving was recent.

- When the letters are cleared,

the inner part of the letters is exposed

and as you can see here, it is very freshly cut,

you can see even the little lines,

the little parallel lines off either the chisel

or even maybe some drill, some electric bit

or drill with which the letters were engraved,

which is of course very unusual for ancient inscriptions.

- [Narrator] And what of the ancient charcoal

and traces of gold which had convinced earlier scientists?

Goren concluded they had simply been added

to the artificial patina applied to the front of the stone.

- And therefore I believe

that the inscription is not genuine.

- [Narrator] Then he turned to the brother of Jesus ossuary.

The bone box itself appears to be genuine.

The stone was covered by a chalky patina,

just what he'd expect if it had spent many years

in an underground tomb.

But the patina in the grooves

of the inscription was different.

Like the Jehoash tablet,

it was not firmly bonded to the surface.

It looked as if the engraver

had cut through the original patina,

then filled in the grooves

with a new material to make it look ancient.

On June 18th 2003,

the Israel Antiquities Authority goes public.

Both objects are declared fake.

- To prove certainly that the patina in the letters

in both items is a modern forgery.

- [Narrator] It hits the headlines worldwide.

Experts who authenticated the artifacts

have their names dragged through the mud.

- It was manipulated.

It was really very very politicized.

- For me, it's clear it is not a forgery.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] But more damning evidence now comes to light.

When police and authority inspectors

raid Oded Golan's premises again,

they find engraving tools, chemicals,

and soil samples taken from sites all over Israel.

Together with scores of artifacts,

many look freshly minted or half-finished.

- They confiscated several tools that I had in my home.

These kind of tools have existed

in the hands of any collector and any dealer in Israel.

- [Narrator] But the evidence leads to Golan

being charged on 15 counts of forgery and fraud.

Four other dealers are accused of being accomplices.

- I never forged anything in my life.

Of course, I shall have to defend myself,

but I have nothing to do with forgeries at all.

- [Narrator] Three years on, the prosecution of Oded Golan

on fraud and forgery charges continues.

And there's still no end in sight.

But whoever was responsible,

it seems a sophisticated fraud is beginning to unravel.

The scandal has provoked anxiety

about every artifact supposedly from biblical times

that has come from dealers or sources unknown.

Could they all be forgeries?

Yuval Goren has checked scores of items

that museums and collectors have acquired on the market.

He has concluded that almost all of them are fake.

Some archaeologists believe

there's only one answer to the problem,

the antiquity trade should be shut down

and its products should be shunned.

- Objects must come from an archeological excavation,

done by archaeologists.

Then they are genuine, there's no question about them.

Then they are okay.

They can use them for historical research.

Then whatever comes from the market

is forgery until otherwise proven.

- [Narrator] This is a country where the antiquities market

has been thriving ever since medieval crusaders

came hunting for holy relics.

Some shops are as old as the antiquities they sell.

But in this city, the buyer should beware

and assume that if the material isn't looted,

it's probably fake, though not in this shop of course.

- [Interviewer] Where do you get your antiquities from?

- Oh, well probably you should ask my dad about this.

- We, I inherited them really from my family.

We used to get them from the people they dig,

but not any more.

- [Interviewer] Why not?

- Not allowed, against the rules here in Israel.

Not allowed to to buy from people they dig.

- [Narrator] Whether an artifact is genuine or looted

or fake, there are ways of enhancing its market value.

- The collectors always want special things.

This is authentic jar, this is from the Iron Age,

from the 7th century BC.

If it's ordinary jar without any decoration or inscription,

it will cost something between $700 to $1,000.

But if someone add some inscription here in ancient Hebrew,

it will be cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] Adding an inscription is less work

and less expensive than faking a whole artifact.

And as investigators have uncovered more fakes,

they feel a pattern is emerging of ancient objects

being embellished with inscriptions

to enhance their value and historical significance.

They even have a good idea

how forgers are producing inscriptions

good enough to fool the experts,

using a standard reference book

published by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Details of inscriptions from genuine artifacts

are copied precisely,

then reassembled as the template for a new engraving.

This is Yaakov, James in ancient Hebrew.

Next, Son of Yosef

to create brother of Jesus,

letters are taken from several ancient sources

to complete the template, James, son of Joseph,

brother of Jesus, and it looks completely authentic.

Any artifact of unknown origin

with a compelling inscription has now become suspect.

So, it was inevitable that attention

would return to that priceless object

in the Israel Museum, the ivory pomegranate.

The pomegranate was now the only item believed

to have survived from Solomon's legendary temple.

Over 25 years have passed since the pomegranate

had first been authenticated by one of the world's experts

on ancient inscriptions, Professor Andre Lemaire.

Since then, experts had discovered

that it wasn't actually made of elephant ivory,

but came from a quite different beast.

- It is a little pomegranate

made of the tooth of a hippopotamus.

- [Narrator] But the big question was,

did the pomegranate really come from Solomon's Temple?

When Professor Goren examined

the surface of the pomegranate,

he saw little to suggest that it was not a genuine artifact.

- [Yuval] You can see that it is old, it is worn.

- [Narrator] There were signs of a few repairs,

traces of what looks like glue,

but the patina looked ancient.

Then he turned his attention to the inscription.

(speaking in foreign language)

- Which means holy to the priests of the house of God.

And this is why this pomegranate

was considered to be from the Solomonic Temple.

- [Narrator] But the pomegranate was badly damaged

some time in its history.

- You can see the break

that took off about 1/3 of the body of the pomegranate.

- [Narrator] Most of the inscription is intact,

but a large chunk is missing.

The letters that are supposed to spell out house of God

are just fragments on the border of the break.

It was these that caught Goren's attention.

He noticed that the grooves cut by the engraver

appeared to stop short of the break, which was odd.

He would have expected them to be sliced cleanly

when the pomegranate was damaged.

- The lines are ending before the edge of the break.

which means that whoever engraved it was very careful

not to make other breaks into the old break.

- [Narrator] It looked to Goren as if the inscription

had been engraved after the pomegranate had been damaged.

- It is clear when you look at it through the microscope

that the inscription was engraved on it

when it was already broken.

- [Narrator] So, someone must have added the inscription

to boost the pomegranate's value.

- It is probably a fake, it's probably a forgery.

- [Narrator] But Goren's analysis makes no sense

to the pomegranate's champion, Professor Lemaire.

- He make a mistake because it is not his field.

- Although the pomegranate is authentic, it is ancient,

the inscription was most likely engraved in modern times.

- Yuval Goren is working out of his field.

And in this case, when even if it

is a professor at a university,

if somebody is working out of his field,

out of his specialty, he is not especially to be trusted.

- [Narrator] But the man who first

authenticated the pomegranate

now finds himself in a very small minority.

The pomegranate has been declared a fake

and removed from display in the Israel Museum.

But there's no let up in the sensational claims.

Jerusalem can prove a nightmare for archeologist

with major monuments of three religions

crowding on top of each other.

(peaceful music)

And in a quiet residential quarter called Talpiot,

apartment blocks overlook one of the most

contentious archeological sites in the world.

In a tiny rose garden, a large concrete slab

conceals the entrance to a 2,000-year-old tomb.

The crudely built structure offers no clue

to the potential importance of what lies beneath.

Cut into the rocky hillside,

the tomb was discovered accidentally in 1980

when the whole area was still a construction site.

Before it could disappear under the new buildings,

a small team of archeologists

was allowed to examine the tomb and its contents.

Among them was Shimon Gibson, then 21 years old.

His job was to map the inside of the tomb.

- Well under this cement slab is a shaft,

which descends for a couple of meters down into the ground.

At the bottom of the shaft is an opening,

which is situated here, which leads into a burial chamber,

which is still in tact.

It's really nice, after 27 years, the tomb is still here.

The tomb itself was full of soil,

at least up to knee level, at the time of excavation,

which meant that the door had been opened in antiquity

and soil had flowed in to the cave itself.

So, this wasn't an in tact tomb.

- [Narrator] Questions about when it was broken into

have recently ignited speculation

about what the tomb originally contained.

Since they were discovered, the ossuaries from the tomb

have been kept at the Antiquities Authority's store.

And it was there, 27 years later in 2007,

that the names inscribed on the ossuaries

provoked intense media speculation

about the occupants of the tomb.

Most of the names are well-known

from the New Testament of the Bible.

Mariame, a form of Mary.

Mary Magdalen perhaps.

Yose, a short form of Joseph.

Maria, another Mary.

And then, most astonishing of all, Yeshua bar Yosef,

Jesus, son of Joseph.

Could this be the resting place of Jesus himself?

The suggestion that this might be the tomb

of the family of Jesus received worldwide publicity.

Now, the man involved in the original excavation

wants to examine the tomb again.

- Anything which has sealed up

creates a kind of sort of atmosphere of conspiracy.

So, I think opening up the slab

and allowing cameras to go down

and to have a look at the tomb would be a good thing.

- [Narrator] Permission has been given to examine the tomb,

but it soon becomes clear that some residents

don't want an excavation in their back yard.

(speaking in foreign language)

- An area in which there's a lot of emotion.

- [Narrator] It highlights the problems

that can arise for archaeologists in a country

where religious passions run high.

- He says he's gonna call the police,

that he doesn't want us excavating.

And he's quite angry.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Pressing on now could provoke

a worse disturbance, so the Talpiot tomb remains sealed.

But from the map Gibson drew of the tomb when it was opened,

we can still get a good idea

of how the remains of the family were laid out.

(tense music)

There were bones and skulls lying on the floor.

The ossuaries lay in small chambers

cut into the walls of the tomb.

They are bearing the name Jesus son of Joseph

was one of the smallest, tucked in the back of a chamber.

Most archaeologists are very skeptical

that this could really have been Jesus of Nazareth.

- One thing I can tell you for certain and that is

that there were no remains of a crucified man in this tomb.

- [Narrator] And the coincidence of the names,

however striking, fails to impress specialists

in this period of history.

- These names are extremely common

among the local Jewish population in the time of Jesus.

It's also problematic

because everything that we know about Jesus and his family

indicates that they were a relatively poor family

who could not have afforded a rock-cut tomb.

If they had owned a rock-cut tomb,

presumably it would have been in Nazareth, their home town,

not in Jerusalem.

We have good evidence for this

from other wealthy families around the country.

- [Narrator] And while the historical controversy rages,

some scientists think it would be a good idea

to re-examine the ossuaries

that came from the disturbed tomb.

American researchers now want to subject them

to forensic-style scrutiny,

especially the most controversial,

Jesus son of Joseph inscription.

- [Steven] 'Cause it looks like these scratches are new.

- [Narrator] They wonder whether dirt

that's been impacted in the inscription

could be concealing signs of recent tampering.

- We're actually trying to remove some of the soil

that's been impacted in the inscriptions and scratches,

not only that to try to remove the soil safely,

as not to destroy any patina.

- [Narrator] The grooves of the inscription

contain traces of mud, which have to be removed

if they're to examine the inscription in detail.

It seems that Jesus son of Joseph

may not be the only name engraved on the box.

- It appears that the name Yeshua,

if this is the actual name

because it's a very difficult name to read,

is not the original name on this ossuary.

Yeshua appears to be super-inscribed

over an earlier name that appeared before that.

It could be something like Yudan, Hanoon,

or a number of possibilities,

but the Yeshua was not the first one in the ossuary.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] The name Yeshua bar Yosef, Jesus son of Joseph,

has been inscribed very crudely

and incorporates some of the underlying inscription.

Could this have an innocent explanation?

Or has Jesus been carved later as a deliberate deception

by adding a few extra strokes,

then using mud to make them look older?

- [Researcher] It's coming, it's coming away there.

- [Man With Blue Shirt] Maybe you're right

about the mud here that was put as a disguise, you know?

- Yes. - To cover up things,

yeah.

- The existence of this hardened mud inside,

we have to look for some explanation for it

'cause we don't really have a good explanation yet,

but that's what we're in the process of doing,

is trying to figure out if this hardened mud

was something that somebody pressed into the inscription

in order to make it look better, or whatever.

It's not, not very clear yet.

- So, now you're starting to get some of this patina away.

- If we're able to remove the mud successfully

without damaging the inscription itself,

this would hope to at least dispel any ideas that this

has any problems in terms of some kind of tampering.

See if we can get some of it, yeah.

- [Researcher] An area that you'll notice

has been unaffected by tape and the mud.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] But these questions

are not likely to be answered just yet.

Worried that removing the mud

might risk harming the ossuary's delicate patina,

the Israel Antiquities Authority

has now called a halt to further investigation.

But whatever the eventual conclusions about tampering,

the scientists' concerns are symptomatic

of the widespread anxiety and alarm

caused by recent revelations of fakery and fraud.

- I do think that the recent sensational claims

have made a mockery of the discipline of archeology.

When a real and important archeological find is made,

the public are unable to evaluate

whether it's true or false.

- [Narrator] In a country where three powerful religions

stake their claim to be the heirs of history,

where believers will seize on any evidence

that backs up their faith, archaeologists have a tough job

separating fiction from fact.

- This matters a lot to us

if we ever want to live in a real world

because what we have is fiction invading the real world.

- It stains archeological research first of all.

It stains the reconstruction of biblical history.

And there is a whole,

a complete contamination of our research.

- And I think that we need to make a statement against this.

- [Narrator] As scores of fake artifacts

have been sold around the world,

academic reputations have been trashed,

and million of dollars have changed hands,

but it's not just museums and wealthy collectors

who are being defrauded.

Distorting history has profound consequences for everyone.

- You know, you feel betrayed,

you feel that you were deceived.

It's one thing to lie about something

that is not important to people,

and it's it's something that's a lie about something

that is intrinsic to their identity.

(tense music)

(dramatic music)