Monday 9 February 2009

Authenticity of Jehoash tablet (again)

"New Findings Document Authenticity of Ancient Sandstone Tablet that Supports Existence of Jewish Temple on the Mount" so the Touro College blurb goes.


"The antiquity of one of the most significant Israeli archeological finds in history has been documented in a recently-published article co-authored by Howard R. Feldman, a biology professor at the Lander College for Women/ The Anna Ruth and Mark Hasten School at Touro College."
The only problem is it is not actually an archaeological find, it might have been had it not ended up as a lump of inscribed stone (a "portable antiquity") on the no-questions-asked antiquities market. It is a lump of inscribed stone and instead of being usable as evidence of anything, a lot of effort is being expended to find evidence that the thing is not a forger's fantasy like so much else on the antiquities market today.

Am I alone in feeling 'post carbon-dating Turin Shroud deja vu' on reading such announcements? Was this another 'success' for vanilin dating I wonder?

Here are the texts:
Ilani, Shimon, Rosenfeld, Amnon, Feldman, Howard R., Krumbein, Wolfgang E., and Kronfeld, Joel 2008a “Archaeometric analysis of the ‘Jehoash Inscription’ tablet”, Journal of Archaeological Science 35, 2966-72.

Ilani, Shimon, Rosenfeld, Amnon, Feldman, Howard R., Krumbein, Wolfgang E., and Kronfeld, Joel 2008b
Archaeometric evidence for the authenticity of the Jehoash Inscription Tablet”, The Bible and Interpretation.
microbes, and gold globule sizes it seems are the clue...
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