Way back when the earth was new and I first began to blog, I wrote this entry about a “potentially revolutionary find” of 3rd c. Christian and Basque language inscriptions.

They would have been the earliest representation of Calvary and the earliest recorded instance of Euskera, the Basque language.

Well, not only are the inscriptions modern fakes, but they’re so fake it’s embarrassing.

Now experts who have studied the pieces in depth say the fakes, some of which used modern glue, should have rung warning bells immediately. References were found to non-existent gods, 19th-century names and even to the 17th-century philosopher Descartes.

Words in Euskara used impossible spellings. The hieroglyphs included references to Queen Nefertiti which would have been almost impossible to make prior to the 19th century.

The Calvary scene, meanwhile, included the inscription “RIP”. “It is a formula that can only be applied to people who are dead,” Almagro told El Correo newspaper. “To say that Jesus Christ is dead would be a heresy. I haven’t seen anything quite so funny in the whole history of Christianity.”

The forger either had fragments of third century pottery which he buried on site, or he had access to the lab where the fragments were examined and planted the forgeries there.

I feel sheepish as hell just for having relayed the story. I can’t imagine what the archaeologists on site were thinking. I mean, dig director Eliseo Gil called the find on a par with Pompeii and Rome itself.

Dude, srlsy. You have a degree. I mean, Decartes? :facepalm: