SYMHC Classics: Tiara of Saitafernes

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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. Since it is April Fools Day, we are releasing a previous April Fools episode as today's Saturday classic. That's the Tiara of Ciataphernes, which was acquired by the Louver but then turned out to be a fake. After this episode came out, we got some questions from listeners about whether we knew what happened to the families of this Yara's creator Israel Rushmovsky, who had fled from Russia to France to try to escape a series of pogroms. He died in Paris in nineteen thirty four at the age of seventy four, and that is where we wrapped up his part in the story because he had died and we really don't know what happened to his family after that. We don't really know if they were still in Paris when it fell to Nazi Germany during World War Two. It's possible that this is documented somewhere, but if so, unfortunately it's not an information that we have access to. So if you were curious about that, unfortunately we do not have the answer. Otherwise, enjoy this episode. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production of iHeartRadio today. It's April Fool's Day. It is April fools Day if you're listening on the day if the episode came out. It's one of the days of the year that I want to love the most. But I find that I am a little bit picky about the level of tomfoolery that I get. It has to be really good or wa wah. I don't want your sad trombone mediocre pranks. I want really good one. But yeah, it is April Fool's Day if you're listening to this the day that it publishes. We have this auspicious calendar situation. So I thought it would be fun to cover a historical hoax, And as I was rummaging around for options, by blind luck, I ran across one for which the date of April first actually figures into the story. And this is the story of the Tiara of Cia Taphernes. And this story sort of places out in three acts. So first we're going to talk about the Scythians and how their artifacts became highly prized in nineteenth century Europe. And then we're going to talk about the hoax itself and how that all went down. And finally, we're going to talk about an artist who came into fame as a result of his sort of accidental part in this whole thing. In eighteen thirty, the archaeological site known as cool Oba was discovered. Excavation started there. So this site is on the Crimean Peninsula, six kilometers to the west of the modern day city of Kirch and it was a burial mound. The cool Oba site really fascinated the world when it was discovered because it was a Scythian burial site. So the Scythians were in the height of their culture from nine hundred to two hundred BC, and as a nomadic, tattoo covered warrior culture, they touched many areas of Central Asia. Herodotus wrote about their fear skills in battle, and they created weapons, particularly bows, that were far advanced over those of other cultures. They were so fast and mobile that they were able to swoop in upon enemy territory and deliver serious damage almost before anyone realized what was happening, and then they would vanish back into their own territory, leaving destruction in their wake. Even though they had a really nomadic culture, Scythians had elaborate burial rituals. Their burial sites were very deep, with internal structures down in the pit, almost like cabins, and the coffins were placed into these. They wanted the dead to have everything they might need in the afterlife, so they also sacrificed horses to include in the burial so that the deceased would have mounts with them, and then all of that in place, the site would be buried under a mound. And the Scythians, because of their warrior reputation and because there are still many gaps in our knowledge about them, remain a source of fascination for historians, and in the eighteen thirties that fascination and the discovery of the Cooloba site sparked a huge interest in the collection of Scythian artifacts. Many of the items that were excavated from Cooloba were beautiful, intricate gold pieces, and they ranged in size from small pieces of jewelry to larger works of often sculptural art. So there was just a scramble to try to attain these pieces, and they weren't always being sold through the proper channels to museums. They also wound up being sold off to private collectors kind of on the download and the fact that the documentation of the artifacts that had been recovered from the site wasn't as meticulous as it should have been. I meant that the knowledge that was pieced together from this effort became just kind of a picture with big missing pieces. That meant that it was not clear exactly what had been at the site. And that also under the analysis and the study of the culture itself that might have been gained from the discovery if things had been more meticulous and regulated. Yeah, I mean even today, like when we have spoken with archaeologists, they talk about how imperative it is to document everything and catalog everything and its place, and in this case that was not happening very well at all. It was pretty scratchy and kind of catches catch can when things actually got notated. And as a consequence, there's a lot of nebulous sort of theoretical stuff that people don't have any real evidence to back up. And all we have the study of the Scythians are these grave sites, which are called kurgans by the way, which if it makes you think of highlander me too. Because of their nomadic culture, they they didn't have things like cities or permanent settlements, so the Kurgans are the only physical evidence that's left behind. And after Cooloba, there were more Kurgans unearthed. More than thirty years after this site was discovered. Another one was found at Chertomic in eighteen sixty eight. Yet another site, this one with multiple mounds, was called Seven Brothers and that was found near the Kuban River in the eighteen seventies. Both of these excavations even more captured the public imagination. Museums were extremely eager to get their hands on artifacts from the city and nomads, and it seemed like there could just never be enough excavation or discovery to satisfy this demand for artifacts. There became this really romanticized and kind of fetishized culture, so no matter what was discovered, people wanted more artifacts. Yeah, it was there was a little bit of city and fever going on in nineteenth century Europe. And as the nineteenth century was coming to a close and all of this fervor was still carrying out, a very short article ran in a newspaper in Vienna, and this brief write up told the story of a peasant. Sometimes you will see the written as though it was peasants plural from the Crimea Peninsula, who had made an astonishing find of historical significance. So important was this item that they had found that the discoverer or discoverers fled Russia fearing that this thing, which was not detailed, was going to be taken away by the government. A few months later, the Huckman brothers, who were antiquities dealers, held an exhibit in Vienna, Austria, that was in February of eighteen ninety six. Their exhibit featured a number of rare items that were alleged to have been recently discovered in Russia. Just to be clear, a lot of the places that we're talking about in this episode, if we were talking about today, that would be Ukraine, but at the time it was Russia, correct. Among these was a tiara, And this is not a tiara like you would think of in the modern sense of the word, with some kind of delicate or maybe ornate little diadem. It was a small domed helmet that was seven inches or seventeen point eight centimeters tall. It weighs about a pound, and it's made of solid gold. Yeah, and it was ornate, just not in the way we would think of say a tiara we might see on one of the lovely wives of the princes of England. So the widest band of decoration on this tiara shows scenes from the Iliad incarved relief, and then the lower band, which is not quite as wide or tall, depending on how you want to describe it, show scenes of life in the Scythian culture. And there's also an inscription inside the tiara in Greek indicating that it is a gift from the people of the Crimean city of Olbia to the king of the Scythians Ciataphernes. It was a fascinating piece and it was shopped around by a dealer by the name of Vogel with the story of this clandestine journey out of Crimea, and he told this story to several museums in Europe. Vienna's Imperial Court Museum did not want this artifact, neither did the British museum, but the Louver did want it and did not hesitate when it was offered the opportunity to acquire it. So on April first, eighteen ninety six, the Louver bought this tiara for two hundred thousand francs. Yeah that's the April first tie in. It doesn't go any further than that. It just is a nice bit of happenstance and kind of prophetic. Yes. So now, the reason that the British Museum and the Imperial Court Museum would pass on what sounds like an amazing find is pretty simple. Both institutions believed that it was a fake. In the case of the British Museum, there had not even been an inspection. Simply the claim that it was from Olbia had a roused suspicion in London because that had often been used by forgers as a city of origin for fake antiquities. It was at this point roughly the antiquities trade version of saying you have a girlfriend in Niagara Falls that no one has met, and that perception that a tiara was not genuine wasn't exactly a secret. As a consequent, the press and France started running stories questioning the authenticity of this new acquisition at the Louver, and the museum's reputation was also in question, so this started a very public battle over the whole issue. On August eighth of eighteen ninety six, the periodical The Nation ran an article titled the Disputed Tiara in the Louver, written by French archaeologist Solomon Reinach. It opened with the following paragraph quote, Seldom has public attention been roused as it is just now by a question of archaeological criticism. The Tiara of Csiataphernes and the gorgeous necklace purchased together with it for the large sum of two hundred thousand francs, have become a favorite topic of conversation. People talk about them and judge them who had never heard the existence of Olbia, nor of the extension of Greek civilization to the northern shores of the Black Sea. Of course, as the daily papers have taken the matter in hand, much nonsense has already been printed about the tiara, and it is probable, the debate having only just begun, that we shall hear a great deal more of it. There was a lot of squabbling that erupted around this tiara, and we will get into some more of it in just a moment, but first we will pause for a quick sponsor break. There were many critics who said that the tiara was a forgery. A professor of Vaslovski of Saint Petersburg and German archaeologists at Alfred Wangler were two of the most prominent. Professor of Vassolowski, who taught Byzantine in Turkish history at the University of Saint Petersburg, was actually the first to publish a claim that the tiara was fake. Vessulovski had a good reputation, and even one of the supporters of the tiara as a true relic wrote quote, Professor Vassolowski is not an urchin. He cannot have written such a note without having serious reasons to give. Ford Wangler made the case that the Tiara of Seyataphernes was incongruous with other and new in Cydian finds from Crimea because it was dated much later. The vast majority of items that had been excavated up to that point were from the fourth and fifth centuries BC, and this one was supposedly from the third century BC. Fort Wangler's position was questioned because it was common knowledge that fake antiquities were coming out of Crimea, but he admitted he had not seen any of them himself. Yes, so people were kind of like, so you say it's a fake just based on like the numbers, but you have never seen a fake to know whether or not this compares to them. The August issue of Cosmopolis featured an article by Adolf ft Wangler dismissing any possibility that this tira could be a genuine third century BC artifact, and then the next month a counter to that article was published, written by the Louver's curator of Greek and Roman antiquities, Monsieur Rond de vi Fosse, and so began a year's long back and forth between believers and detractors. Critics brought up the pretty glaring fact that this piece looked way too pristine to date back to the time of the Citians. There was virtually none of the damage that you would anticipate when examining something that old. Fort Wangler did concede that some of the tiara was legitimately old. He thought that the two brass nails that were used in its construction were indeed antique. Even outside the Louver there were people who believed that the tiara was the real deal. That article that I quoted just before the break from the Nation goes on to state quite plainly that the author believed one hundred percent that the tiara and the necklace it was purchased with Both were quote perfectly genuine antiques, and the Tiara's backstory grew and gained more detail as its status was hashed out, including in that article. So according to Rhinock, the item came into the possession of a dealer at Otchakov, who tried to sell it to account Tuskivitch before moving to Lemberg and then to Vienna for the exhibit that we mentioned earlier. Rnach made the case that no one questioned the trs authenticity when it was on display, and that it was only once money got involved that people started claiming it was a fake. He also said that he had been on hand for the meeting at the Louver where the purchase was approved, and that the committee present did very carefully consider the possibility of a forgery, given the knowledge that crimean fakes were becoming more and more commonplace. He also pointed out that a lot of the Tiara's detractors changed their minds once they had seen this piece in person. Rynoch went on to mention that the French public was prone to dismissing their countrymen as experts in anything and deferring to foreign scholars. When he shifted from his critique a third Wangler to discussing Vesselovski quote, The public at large believed in the Russian's assertion, first because a Russian in contemporary France is something more than an ordinary mortal, and secondly because our public is always ready to believe that the officials of its own country are lazy or ignorant. I love that quote. So because Vessulovski was Russian and Ford Wangler was German, the Louve dismissed their writings on the matter, that this was just an issue of national jealousy. This perfect and tidy nature of the piece had been the primary clue to its youth for its critics, but the Louve claimed that made it all the more special as part of their collection because they had this relic that was in pristine condition. The press continued to skewer the museum, though for more than six years, over its insistence that the Tiara was the real deal. Eventually, an editor at the newspaper Lenttrens, again named on re Rochefort, made the case to the museum that everything would be settled if they just launched to throw investigation and determined the tis origin and as that was going on the Tiara and whether it was a forgery was international news, and what had initially begun as a debate in antiquity circles over these six years eventually reached even the smallest towns in the world, and that spread of information was what brought about a revelation in the matter in the form of a jeweler from Russia named Lifschutz. When this jeweler heard about the inquiry into the helmet's history, he remembered seeing a colleague working on a piece that really matched this tiara. His account of having seen the creation of the item that had been the center of so many public disagreements was printed in the newspaper Lemata in Paris, and the man that he named as the creator was Israel Rushmovsky, because he had a reputation for excellent work. Rushmovsky actually had briefly come up as a possible antiquities forger several years before all of this. In eighteen ninety seven, a man named Monsieur de Sterne allegedly visited Odessa, where Rushmovsky lived, and started a rumor that this man was creating forgeries. Rushmovsky wrote a letter to the Journald de Debat firmly a s that he was doing no such thing, and that letter was published on October third of eighteen ninety seven. But none of this had connected the artist to the tiara. It was just a case of a general accusation being leveled based on the fact that Rushmovsky was a very skilled metalsmith working in an area that was well known at that point for producing forgeries. The naming of a specific artist and a witness claiming that the Tira was fake was just explosive. Monsieur Ronde de Vifos made a formal request to the French Minister of Public Instruction for permission to pull the Tiara out of the collection and do a full inquiry. The minister granted the request and ordered a judicial inquiry as well. Once Rushmovsky's name was in the mix in the Tira controversy, the Louve brought him to Paris for questioning as well, and as Rushmovsky told his tale of creating this intricate helmet, it implicated the Hukman brothers. Rushmowsky said that the Hukmans had approached him about creating the as a commission, claiming that they wanted it as a gift for a friend who was an archeologist, and he was given reference material books featuring Greco scythe and discoveries to base his design on. He was paid eighteen hundred roubles for this work. It is unclear what, if anything, by the way, happened to the Hawkman's as a result of all of this. They may have been long gone because their name doesn't seem to come up in any accounts of what happened with this whole story. After this, Rusmovsky described in detail the design and construction process he had used to create the faux artifact. He made it in three separate pieces that were fitted together and soldered in a way that was really carefully hiding the seams. Then he used a hammer to create some dents in the piece. Although he was really skilled and exacting in his work, these were the exact details that an expert would have noticed and factored into an analysis of the piece. One of the characteristics of the dents, which was cited as being an indicator of a fake who, was the fact that none of the denting damage had been done to any of the detailed sections, only the pieces that didn't have any design on them, and then there wasn't any weathering other than the minor dings here and there. Yeah, the backstory that was kind of being used when this was sold was like, oh, those dents are from like a moldering crypt falling apart, and it's like really, because they have great aim, you would think that an artist coming forward and describing exactly how he made this forgery would close the case. But it did not. Not quite yet. We're going to tell you what happened next and how all of this impacted Rushmovsky's life. After we hear a quick word from one of the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going. While the artist admitting to the work that he had done on this forgery would seem to be a fairly conclusive bit of testimony, the Louver wanted more proof, so Rushmovsky was given a of gold and asked to create a piece of a fake city in Tiara, basically create another one, and before witnesses he did exactly that, and that proved the embarrassing fact that the Louver had bought and defended a forgery. To be fair when compared to other forgeries, Rushmovsky's work was so far superior and more convincing in simply trying to make the best possible commission that he could. He had outdone those who had actually been trying to pass off their work as ancient. As all of this information about the hoax was circulating through the press around the globe, so with something else, and that was a universal admiration for Rushmovsky's work. Since he hadn't known that his creation was going to be shopped around as a historically significant find, and since he had been entirely forthright under questioning, his reputation was not harmed, so people didn't brand him a forger. That was sort of an unintended side effect of his making this thing. His work was described in articles as quote a very fine piece of goldsmithery Rushmovsky sort of smartly brought one of his other works to Paris when he traveled there on the business of the Tiara of Seyataphernes, so that he could enter that other piece into the nineteen oh three Paris Salon exhibition of Decorative Arts. That piece that he brought is probably one that you have seen photos of because it occasionally gets passed around on social media. Kind of every couple of years. It's a tiny, tiny skeleton made of gold. It's only three point five inches long, it's about nine centimeters, but it has more than one hundred fifty parts, and it's fully articulated. Even the jaw moves, and it is highly detailed. The skeleton took him almost five years to make. He worked on it from eighteen ninety two to eighteen ninety six, and then once he was done with it, he thought it needed a proper encasement. So to hold this skeleton, he also made a tiny ornate coffin out of silver with a blue velvet lining. He worked on that for the next five years and then made additional edits over several more years. After the nineteen oh three salon the coffin, the skeleton goes and is so small. It's four and three eight inches long, which is eleven point two centimeters. It's so beautiful. It's one of those things. Have you run into it on social media all the years. So maybe it's just me because I run in you know, halloweeny gothy, spooky circles, but it always comes up, and I've had it sent to me many times where people are like, this is right up your alley, I'm like it is. It is so spectacularly beautiful, and Rushmowsky was awarded a gold medal at the exhibition in Paris, and moreover he gained the attention and favor of a number of wealthy art patrons, including the Baron James de Rothschild, and when Rushmowsky headed home to Odessa, he took with him several commissions for more of his astonishing and beautiful work. From nineteen o three to nineteen oh six, pogroms destroyed much of the Jewish community in Russia. Hundreds of Jews were killed during a program in Odessa in nineteen oh five. Rusmovski and his family managed to survive. But when he returned to Paris in nineteen oh six to once again exhibit his work in the Salon, he had an eye toward the future. He really felt that he needed to get his family out of Russia for their safety, and he wanted to relocate to Paris. Yeah, since he already had kind of a client base developing there, it just seemed like the smartest move. But it still took several years for Rushmovsky to execute his plan and get everything arranged. But in nineteen ten, Finally, he and his family permanently moved to Paris. He wrote his memoir in Yiddish and those were published in the late nineteen twenties, and then he died in Paris in nineteen thirty four at the age of seventy four. And before he died, the artist created a miniature headstone for himself and his wife, in which he engraved a happy man was eye in life, Peace and quiet, Bread and clothing were always found in my home. I loved my work, my wife, and my home. Even after my death, my spirit will prevail as the work of my hands that I have left behind. The skeleton that Rushmovsky made changed hands from one collector to another over the years. In nineteen ninety seven, both it and the tiara were included in an exhibit in Jerusalem titled The Secret of the Golden Tiara Works by Israel Rushbovski. On April twenty ninth of twenty thirteen, that tiny skeleton was auctioned by Saupies and it was expected to sell for one hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but when the bidding was all done, it went for three hundred and sixty five thousand dollars. The Louver did not get rid of the Tiara of Seataphrenes after it was revealed to be a forgery. Initially, they kept it tucked away in the museum archive. It was widely presumed that it would never see the light of day again, but in the years since then, its status as a famous fake has led to some public interest in se In nineteen fifty four, the Louve turned the institution's embarrassment into an exhibit and included the tiara in their salon of fakes that they assembled for a limited run. Yeah, there are also I didn't write down the number, but I think there were eight fake mona Lisas included in that exhibit as well, which I thought was a pretty good pr move. Actually, the Louve does mention the tiara briefly on its website as of today in its section on the history of the institution. In its section titled Sadness of the bellapoc Is the note quote two unfortunate incidents seemed to sum up this difficult period. The eighteen ninety six purchase of the Tiara of Sayataphernes, which proved to be a fake and the theft of the Mona Lisa in nineteen eleven embarrassing at the time, but I feel like because everyone recognizes what a beautiful piece of work it was at this point one hundred plus years later, people are like, no, that's a valid museum piece. Now. Yeah, I wish we had a better picture of it available to put on our website. The ones that we have access to aren't They're not particularly crisp, so they don't show all the beautiful detail. Yeah, there are better pictures of it floating around the internet, but we do not have rights to use them. So if you want to see more of it in its full gold glory, you can do that. The British Museum also has a copy of it that has some pretty detailed photographs on their website. So yeah, it's an interesting thing to think about an artist accidentally being so good at his work that he makes it very easy for a museum to be fooled without ever intending to do so. Yeah, he just wanted to make the best possible gift for that archaeologist that was imaginary that he could, And yeah, it's a consequence all kinds of craziness erupted and fights and people. It's very very funny that reichmun article that I refer to talks about like, you know, the deplorable articles of other people that will not accept that this is the real thing. It's very funny. People got very very head up over this whole. Yeah, this whole Tiara, And it reminds me a little bit of the piltdown man Um. Yeah, how fun. It was fun. But also you know, it's it's uh disheartening that human nature is what it is sometimes, but it was it was fun to read articles about the piltdown man that was just people talking with utter confidence about what this meant from a scientific perspective when it was in fact completely fake. Yeah. I mean there are are long discussions even now about like what percentage of pieces in museums are forgeries, because odds are this is you know, one of many that passed over the years. There are museums that have purchased pieces that you know, have turned out to be UM forgeries, or there are lots of pieces that we probably don't even know our forgeries um. And there are plenty in contention all day, every day as we speak. But again, so gorgeous that in my opinion it belongs in a museum anyway. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Our old house stuff works email address no longer works, and you can find us all over social media at missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.