Hello
Egyptian collectors!
Anyone who has tried to get into the hobby of collecting
Egyptian antiquities will quickly come to realize just how many
fakes are out there. It can feel a little overwhelming at times, but there are a few
good ways to tell what's real and what's not, as long as you can inspect the artifact closely.
I'll post a few images here that I feel may be helpful for anyone trying to identify if an ancient
Egyptian artifact is real or
fake.
Sometimes simply checking under a microscope is a
good way to determine if it's real when other observations fail. This is most helpful for
faience, but can
help with many forms of ancient ceramics.
In this case, I examined a pair of
faience amulets under a microscope. One
amulet was genuine, the other a clever
fake. Both
amulets looked similar at first glance.
The differences are shown in the below images, which I made during a project several years ago.
TOP PHOTO: These magnified images are from a real
faience Thoth
amulet bought from a reliable
antiquities dealer at private
auction. Take note of the uneven glazing, variation of color, and dust in all of the little nooks and crannies. The
faience glaze is opaque, due to the high amount of impurities in the ancient formula. You'll have a hard time seeing air bubbles in the glassy parts. Any rough areas have been filled with caked-on dust, which even the most protected
amulets will accumulate over time.
The fourth slide is a magnification of a small hole in the
amulet. The dust is fibrous and caked on thickly. This is likely "mummy dust," although it could also be the remains of a string. It is a complex mixture of many materials, fibers, dust, resin, etc. Sellers who try to
fake mummy dust tend to use one material, which causes the dust to seem to be a uniform composition under magnification. Some sellers will sprinkle their
amulets with real mummy dust, but it will fail to get into all the nooks and crannies, leaving some areas with clean, glassy holes where bubbles caused flaws in the glaze.
Below you'll see images of a
fake amulet. Take note of the clearly visible bubbles in the glaze, and the overall uniformity of color and cleanliness of the surface. You'll notice you can see the bubbles deep below the surface, due to how clear and pure the glaze is - a sign of industrially refined chemicals.
This is not what you'd see on an object that has been collecting dust for thousands of years. Even the best preserved artifacts will have some build up. On higher magnifications with a better microscope, small
flecks of shiny dust, likely metal flakes, can be seen. These most likely would have corroded away in the ancient samples.
BOTTOM PHOTO: Magnified images of a
fake faience Anubis amulet sold by the
notorious seller of
fakes on
eBay, "
collector08888." (I knew it was
fake when I bought it, although he insisted it was genuine.)
Fakers have been getting better at making convincing
fakes, but hopefully this will
help the
average collector weed out some of the less obvious
fakes.
Thanks for reading!