FEATURE/Mummified Princess is a Fraud, ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine Reports; Ownership has been Subject of Hot Dispute Between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.Feature Editors FEATURE... NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE FEATURES)--Dec. 21, 2000 Cool $11 Million was Sought On Black Market A mummy adorned with a cuneiform-inscribed gold plaque identifying it as a 2,600-year-old Persian princess The Persian Princess or Persian Mummy is a mummy of an alleged Persian princess that surfaced in Pakistani Baluchistan in October 2000. After huge publicity and further investigation, the mummy proved to be an archaeological forgery and possibly a murder victim. is a fraud, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. an exclusive report in the January/February issue of ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine. Seized by Pakistani police in the western city of Quetta during a murder investigation, the mummy has been claimed by Iran and Afghanistan's Taliban regime as well as Pakistan. The complete story, written by Kristin M. Romey, Assistant Managing Editor, and Mark Rose, Managing Editor of ARCHAEOLOGY is available online at ARCHAEOLOGY's Web site at www.archaeology.org. (Updates to the story will be posted as developments warrant.) Two weeks after the discovery of the mummy hit the local and international press this past October, Oscar White Muscarella Oscar White Muscarella (b. 1931 in New York) is a US archaeologist and curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His specialty is the antique art and archeology of the Near East. of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and author of The Lie Became Great: The Forgery of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, visited ARCHAEOLOGY's offices, where he was asked for his thoughts on the Persian princess. Muscarella stated that its description sounded remarkably similar to photographs of a gold-adorned mummy sent to him last March by a New Jersey resident on behalf of an unidentified dealer in Pakistan-in fact, they were the same. Seven months earlier, Muscarella had received four photos of a mummy in a wooden coffin, replete with golden crown, mask, and inscribed in·scribe tr.v. in·scribed, in·scrib·ing, in·scribes 1. a. To write, print, carve, or engrave (words or letters) on or in a surface. b. To mark or engrave (a surface) with words or letters. breastplate breastplate 1. for use with a saddle, a strap attached to the girth at its lowest point, which then passes between the forelimbs, passes upwards and divides to pass on either side of the neck and to meet at the withers after attaching to the front edge of the saddle. . The author of an accompanying claimed that the mummy was the daughter of the Persian king Xerxes, referring to an attached one-page translation of the cuneiform cuneiform (ky  nē`ĭfôrm) [Lat.,=wedge-shaped], system of writing developed before the last centuries of the 4th millennium B.C. inscription on the breastplate. The owners, he wrote, had a video of the mummy that could be sent to New York New York, state, United StatesNew York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of if the museum was interested in purchasing the princess. Muscarella, who suspected immediately that the mummy was a fraud, contacted the translator of the inscribed gold plaque, a cuneiform expert at a major American university American University, at Washington, D.C.; United Methodist; founded by Bishop J. F. Hurst, chartered 1893, opened in 1914. It was at first a graduate school; an undergraduate college was opened in 1925. Programs provide for student research at many government institutions. , and found out that the dealer's New Jersey representative had not given him the complete analysis of it. The inscription does indeed contain the line "I am the daughter of the great king Xerxes," as well as a sizeable chunk lifted straight from a famous inscription of king Darius (522-486 B.C.) at Behistun in western Iran. The Behistun inscription, which records the king's accomplishments, dates to 520-519 B.C., substantially later than the 600 B.C. date proposed for the mummy. The second page of analysis listed several problems with the mummy's inscription that led the scholar to believe that its author wrote in a manner inconsistent with Old Persian. The inscription, he concluded, was likely a modern falsification falsification /fal·si·fi·ca·tion/ (fawl?si-fi-ka´shun) lying. retrospective falsification unconscious distortion of past experiences to conform to present emotional needs. , probably dating from no earlier than the 1930s. Muscarella broke off communications with the New Jersey representative. Seven months later, police raided a house in Quetta and the Persian princess surfaced again-this time under the glare of the international ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine has submitted Muscarella's documentation to federal authorities, who have forwarded the matter to Interpol. Hopefully, the dispute between uneasy neighbors in a dangerous part of the world will be resolved. While the Persian princess may be a fraud, perhaps a genuine Egyptian mummy with forged Persian additions, she is a reminder of the powerful emotions that can be sparked by unprecedented, or unbelievable archaeological discoveries. Updates to the story will be posted online at ARCHAEOLOGY's Web site at http://www.archaeology.org/ as developments warrant. Additional information on ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine is available at http://www.archaeology.org/. ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine, published for more than 50 years by the Archaeological Institute of America The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) is a North American nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of public interest in archaeology, and the preservation of archaeological sites. It is based at Boston University. (www.archaeological.org), is dedicated to providing the public with news and information about archaeological discoveries. The AIA AIA - Application Integration Architecture also publishes ARCHAEOLOGY's DIG (www.dig.archaeology.org), an exciting new archaeology magazine for kids. Editor's Note: Please cite ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine as the source for this material. |
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