We all know that ancient Greece is the cornerstone of European and American civilization, the so-called Renaissance, the revival is the ancient Greece, ancient Roman literature and art, from the Renaissance to the rise of modern Europe, a large part of it is based on the foundation of ancient Greek civilization, the source of achievement of many masters in modern Europe can be traced back to ancient Greece. Therefore, it is foreseeable that in Europe and the United States, which are full of ancient Greek complexes, once the ancient Greek texts reappear in the sky, the sensation set off will be imaginable, just like the discovery of the Spring and Autumn Warring States Bamboo Jane in China today.
At the beginning of this century, italy's Non-Profit Foundation of the Bank of San Paolo in Turin spent 2.75 million euros to auction an ancient Greek document with papyrus paper and ink that is nearly 2,000 years old, planning to donate it to the Egyptian Museum in Turin. However, something inexplicable happened, first the Egyptian Museum of Turin refused to accept it, and then the authorities assessed that it was only worth 20 euros.
During World War II, a batch of papyrus documents reappeared in Egypt, with about 200 fragments of documents, the source of which is unknown, and the works of the ancient Greek master Artemidourus are recorded. There are texts, paintings, and maps in the literature, among which the maps are considered priceless, most likely the oldest maps of Greco-Roman times, and the only map of all the papyrus documents.
Artemidolus is the ancient Greek version of Xu Xiake, born about the 2nd century BC, in the era of the decline of ancient Greece and the rise of ancient Rome, equivalent to the middle and early period of the Western Han Dynasty in China, he has been to many places in his life, written a lot of notes, drawn a lot of maps, and then the Greek geographer Strapo is referring to many of his documents, wrote 17 volumes of geography. Written on this papyrus paper is the work of Artemidourus, which has not been passed down, so it is of extraordinary value.
Tests have shown that the papyrus used in the literature dates back to 15-85 AD, and the ink is consistent with the ink type of the 1st century AD. Although it does not match the age of Artemidourus, it is impossible to be a work written by himself, but from the perspective of papyrus paper and ink, these documents are more than 2,000 years old, and even if they are fakes, they are also forgeries with a history of 2,000 years, which still have extraordinary value.
In 1971, antique dealer Selop Jimonian legally imported it to Germany, and in 1980 it was publicly exhibited in Germany, and the document was collated and published at the end of the last century, and Sold by Hymonian at the beginning of this century.
In 2004, the Non-Profit Foundation of the Bank of San Paolo in Turin, Italy, took out 2.75 million euros to buy the ancient documents and send them to the laboratory of the National University of Milan for in-depth research and conservation. After that, the Foundation is ready to donate it to the Egyptian Museum in Turin. To his surprise, however, the director of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Eleni Vasilica, was strongly opposed and unwilling to accept the "precious documents".
It turned out that Eleni Vasilyka was very distrustful of Lop Shimonian, because he had a black history of smuggling and forging cultural relics, and the authenticity of the cultural relics he handled was difficult to say, and out of serious distrust of him, Eleni Vasilica was reluctant to accept this batch of papyrus documents.
More importantly, when the experts tested it again in detail, they finally found that the document was forged and the content was fictionalized by posterity. Konstantin Simonides was a notorious 19th-century counterfeiter who put some papyrus on a zinc net, then acidated it, simulated two thousand years of olding, and then used preserved ancient ink to forge the content on the paper, and finally forged the work of "Artemidourus". Finally, after authoritative evaluation, this batch of papyrus paper is only worth 20 yuan.
In fact, there are countless counterfeits of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign cultural relics, and things that are fake and chaotic occur from time to time, and even many top experts have "eye-punching" times, so it is normal to forge ancient Greek works and the foundation to buy fake goods.
The point of the matter, however, is that the forgers forged the works of the ancient Greek masters, and if the artifacts were not recognized, then these contents are considered to be the work of Artemidourus, adding another ironclad evidence to the glory of ancient Greek civilization. This inevitably makes people wonder how many of the works of other ancient Greek masters we are familiar with are forged like these artifacts? Such doubts are not out of the ordinary, take Aristotle's Masterpiece as an example.
In 1684, the English publisher John Howe first published Aristotle's Masterpiece, a medical book on sex and conception, including many early midwifery and natural philosophy, about Aristotle's understanding of medicine. The book was a huge seller, pirated in its first year of publication, followed by hundreds of different editions in the UK and the US, and was still on sale in the 1930s, with little change in content. At that time, in addition to being proficient in philosophy, physics, astronomy, mathematics, etc., Aristotle also had to add a medicine, and even some of the medical knowledge he mastered had reached the level of the 16th century in Europe.
But the book is a forgery, and the flaws are simple, because it mentions that Aristotle believed in Jesus. Aristotle was a man of the 4th century BC, and Jesus was born in the 0th year of AD, so Aristotle could not have believed in Jesus. In the final analysis, in order to sell books, booksellers used Aristotle's celebrity effect, just like many martial arts novels in the last century were titled Jin Yong. Of course, despite the obvious flaws, it was not until the end of the 19th century that Europeans believed it was a forgery.
The French humanist, logician, philosopher, and educational reformer Peter lucius Ramis (1515-1572) said, "Everything about Aristotle is forged or false." This sentence may be somewhat absolute, but judging from the Atmidolos papyrus documents and the Masterpieces of Aristotle, at least some of the ancient Greek works circulating today are forgeries of later generations.
It can be seen that you can't blindly believe in ancient Greek works, because what you think of as original ancient Greek works may actually be just forgeries of later generations of cultural relics counterfeiters or booksellers in order to sell books.