Artefact hunters and collectors are not always the sharpest knives in the drawer, and often are pretty much ignorant about antiquities, so are easy to pass off fakes to them. If you are stupid, gullible, careless and greedy, there is no end of people who want to sell you dodgy "artefacts. Like this case : 'Fugitive suspects create fake ancient cemetery to defraud antiquities dealers' Egypt Independent February 17, 2023. This practice has been going on for some time, I've seen a whole load of videos - on Facebook for example.
The Egyptian security authorities have revealed that fugitive suspects used a clever trick to defraud antiquities dealers. They achieved this by mimicking an ancient cemetery to sell its contents as original artifacts to illegal antiquities dealers. The suspects created an ancient cemetery under the ground, in al-Hiba area in al-Fashn locality, Beni Suef, containing painted and engraved fake relics, a gypsum coffin, hand-made statues, and quantities of gold-plated ingots made of gypsum, to be used in defrauding antiquities traders. The committee, which was formed under the chairmanship of Director of Antiquities of Beni Suef, Omar Zaki, to investigate the fake tomb, said that all the found relics inside the tomb were made of gypsum, or imitated and purchased from the Khan al-Khalili [market] [...] Prosecutors seized the counterfeit artifacts and ordered the arrest of the fugitive suspects..It is a shame though that the authorities did not catch those responsble for the heavy looting of El-Hibeh (El-Hiba) itself [about which there is a lot on this blog in 2013-4].
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