Fake comes for the Archbishop

In 1990, excavators found a Chi-Ro amulet in a Roman grave in Shepton Mallet in Somerset. The find was explosive: the amulet marked the grave as the earliest Christian burial in Europe, which would redraw the map of the spread of Christianity.

The city of Shepton Mallet named a street and a theater after the amulet. The Archbishop of Canterbury wore a reproduction of it around his neck.

Then people started to actually, you know, study it. The British Museum’s tests at the time were inconclusive. Now the University of Liverpool has tested the amulet with the latest and greatest technology, and declared it a fake. The amulet is not Roman at all.

It’s barely even old. Hell, it looks like a Coke bottle cap someone took a finishing nail and some craft store beads to, although at least one theory suggests actual silversmiths and actual Roman silver were involved.

The amulet is now thought to be a modification of a Roman brooch dug up in Sussex 100 years ago. New technology has allowed experts to analyse the composition of the amulet in more detail than was previously possible. Samples of metal taken from the amulet were analysed by the university which found them to be consistent with silver produced in the 19th century or later.

So it’s a blend of the old and the new, it seems, put together by fakers with nebulous motives.

9 thoughts on “Fake comes for the Archbishop

  1. it seems you’ve all been fooled into believing what rubbish the experts tell you.
    20 years after the find and they still have not published one scrap of evidence to provce their mockery of this deceased Christian man.

    If you think this is good professional conduct to lie to the nation and to strip someone of his Faith, because he had the insolence to be buried in a place that academics found unacceptable, then continue to go along with that misconduct by not demanding to see proof of the matter.

    1. I assume then that you’ve seen proof that the amulet is indeed Roman? You certainly speak from a position of incontrovertible certainty, so since you demand proof from those who dispute the ancient provenance, I can only assume you have equally clear proof of your claim.

  2. hi livius drusus.

    the saga is far too long to go into here, but yes I am totally 100% convinced that the find is genuine.

    Most fakes are found in unstratified, unprovenanced areas, eg we have no idea where they were really found. Some fakes are handed in to museums, some are bought at auction.

    This find came from a known specific grave, we have datums on it, we know to one millimetre where it came from.

    To the astonishment of all the archaeological experts who pronounce the amulet a fake, archaeological finds are proven on the basis of context/ provenance/ stratigraphy. None of these 3 fundamental bodies of evidence was addressed when the amulet was dismissed on a technicality.

    Evidence we would now need to research new aspects of the amulet’s history is unavailable because for some obscure reason, the bone specialist at the time, in 1990, failed to collect the evidence. This would suggest that the establishment never intended to take the amulet seriously from the start.

    The details are too long to go into here, but when I say this case is a total disgrace to British archaeology I am giving British archaeology the highest compliment possible.

    What kinda annoys me though is when other people who were not there and had no involvement whatsoever, tell me what did or did not happen.

    There was only one person who saw the amulet emerge from the ground, myself, and I was prevented from giving evidence to a public enquiry by the organizer who knew exactly what evidence I would give, and who dropped the enquiry the moment I agreed to give evidence under oath (since he himself had given me that evidence of motive and identity for corporate deceit in 1990, but unlike me jumped on board the modern hoax bandwagon so as to not upset his superiors. a long story.

    god something stinks of bullshit if you understand me precisely. There’s no need to say anything more. Believe who you wish to believe.

  3. Anyone on teh intertubes can easily make the claim: “But I was there!!”

    Doesn’t change the fact that using modern technologies, they were able to determine that the silver from the amulet was, indeed, produced with silver dug up in the 19th century.

  4. Anyone on teh intertubes can easily make the claim: “But I was there!!”

    Doesn’t change the fact that using modern technologies, they were able to determine that the silver from the amulet was, indeed, produced with silver dug up in the 19th century.

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