On Saturday 22 September a day of public lectures on forgery and fake manuscripts will be held at Macquarie University in Sydney. ‘Faking it: Manuscripts for the Margins’, convened by Malcolm Choat and Rachel Yuen-Collingidge, will take place in the Australian Hearing Hub, Level 1 lecture theatre at Macquarie University from 9.30 am–5 pm, with an evening reception and a viewing of an associated exhibition of forgeries and questioned objects in the Museum of Ancient Cultures to follow.
This public event brings together twelve speakers to present diverse perspectives on forgery, authenticity, and related issues. The keynote speaker is Professor Professor Christopher Rollston, Associate Professor of Northwest Semitic languages and literatures at George Washington University, Washington D.C., who will be joined by eight other international scholars of forgeries, and experts from Macquarie and other Australian institutions.
The event will feature presentations of fake texts in Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English on stone, papyrus, parchment, and paper, as well as discussions of forgery as the construction of history in the Middle ages; the way we assess authenticity; public controversies over questioned manuscripts; the effect of forgeries on antiquities markets, scholarship, and public discourse; and the relationship between fake and replica in the age of 3D replicas. Throughout the event will examine the importance of forgeries for the way we assess and communicate history, and how they effect our view of both the past and the present. A list of speakers and titles may be found below. Further information about the event, including abstracts, may be found at http://www.
Admission is free, but registration is required. To register, go to http://events.mq.edu.au/
Funding for this event has been generously provided by the Ian Potter Foundation, the Australian Research Council, the MQ Ancient Cultures Research Centre, the Sir Asher Joel Foundation, and the Society for the Study of Early Christianity.
Speakers and Titles
Forging Fakes and Just Plain Faking. Thoughts on a Range of Forgery Types
Rodney Ast, University of Heidelberg
Forgery or restoration? Fake inscriptions in Grand Tour collections.
Caroline Barron, Birkbeck, University of London
New Testament Textual Criticism and Forgery
Stephen Carlson, Australian Catholic University
Once a forger, always a forger. How to deal with fake inscriptions
Lorenzo Calvelli, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Fan Fiction: Evangelicalism, Inerrancy, and the Marketplace for Modern-day Relic Hunters.
Kipp Davis, Trinity Western University
The Jerusalem Papyrus, Israel, and UNESCO
Michael Langlois, University of Strasbourg
3D printed replicas vs their originals for the study and preservation of ancient Egyptian antiquities
Rita Lucarelli, University of California Berkeley
Fake Founders and Counterfeit Claims: Forging the Past in the Middle Ages
Levi Roach, University of Exeter
Emotional Authenticity: Anne Boleyn’s Letter from the Tower
Stephanie Russo, Macquarie University
Fires in the sky: the “Tulli Papyrus”, an alleged Egyptological forgery
Nicola Reggiani, University of Parma
The Future’s Perfect Forgery (and the Way for You to Debunk It).
Christopher Rollston, George Washington University
Faking it: Reflections on a theme
Rachel Yuen-Collingridge (Macquarie University)
