page_title: Moses Shapira
section_title: Manuscript forgeries
hierarchical_section_title: Moses Shapira / Manuscript forgeries
caption_attribution_description: English: w:Moses Shapira and w:Christian David Ginsberg
context_page_description: Moses Wilhelm Shapira was a Jerusalem antiquities dealer and purveyor of allegedly forged Biblical artifacts – the most high profile of which was the Shapira Scroll. The shame brought about by accusations that he was involved in the forging of ancient biblical texts drove him to suicide in 1884. The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in 1947, in approximately the same area he claimed his material was discovered, has cast some doubt on the original forgery charges.
context_section_description: In 1883 Shapira presented what is now known as the Shapira Strips, a supposedly ancient scroll written on leather strips which he claimed had been found near the Dead Sea. The Hebrew text hinted at a different version of Deuteronomy, including a surprising eleventh commandment ("Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart: I am God, thy God"). Shapira sought to sell them to the British Museum for a million pounds, and allowed them to exhibit two of the 15 strips. The exhibition was attended by thousands.
  However, Clermont-Ganneau also attended the exhibition; Shapira had denied him access to the other 13 strips. After close examination, Clermont-Ganneau declared them to be forgeries. Soon afterward British biblical scholar Christian David Ginsburg came to the same conclusion. Later Clermont-Ganneau showed that the leather of the Deuteronomy scroll was quite possibly cut from the margin of a genuine Yemenite scroll that Shapira had previously sold to the Museum.
  Shapira fled London in despair, his name ruined and all of his hopes crushed. Six months later, on March 9, 1884, he shot himself in Hotel Bloemendaal in Rotterdam.
  The Shapira Strips disappeared and then reappeared a couple of years later in a Sotheby's auction, where they were sold for 10 guineas. In 1899 they were probably destroyed in a fire at the house of the presumed final owner, Sir Charles Nicholson.
caption: 1883 Punch magazine cartoon of Shapira and Ginsburg
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