SYMHC Classics: Tiara of Saitafernes

This 2019 episode the tale of an elaborate hoax. It starts with the Scythians and how their artifacts became highly prized in 19th century Europe, and ends with an artist who came into fame as a result of his part in a forgery.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
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

(00:23):
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

(00:45):
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.

(01:05):
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

(01:27):
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.

(01:51):
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

(02:11):
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

(02:35):
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

(02:56):
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

(03:19):
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

(03:42):
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

(04:06):
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

(04:28):
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

(04:51):
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

(05:11):
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

(05:34):
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

(05:56):
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

(06:20):
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,

(06:40):
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

(07:02):
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,

(07:25):
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

(07:47):
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

(08:12):
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

(08:32):
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

(08:56):
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.

(09:20):
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

(09:42):
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,

(10:06):
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.

(10:29):
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

(10:52):
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

(11:21):
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

(11:43):
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

(12:05):
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

(12:27):
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

(12:49):
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

(13:12):
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

(13:33):
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

(13:53):
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

(14:14):
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

(14:36):
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

(14:58):
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

(15:19):
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

(15:40):
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

(16:01):
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.

(16:21):
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

(16:43):
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.

(17:06):
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

(17:30):
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

(17:50):
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

(18:12):
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.

(18:33):
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,

(18:55):
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

(19:18):
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

(19:49):
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

(20:12):
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

(20:32):
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

(20:54):
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

(21:17):
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

(21:38):
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

(22:01):
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,

(22:22):
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

(22:42):
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.

(23:05):
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

(23:26):
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

(23:49):
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

(24:13):
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

(24:33):
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

(24:56):
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

(25:18):
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,

(25:40):
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

(26:02):
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

(26:22):
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,

(26:43):
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,

(27:06):
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

(27:28):
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

(27:51):
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.

(28:16):
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(28:39):
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