A Philistine Fake

The forger’s technique is illustrated here in detail for those who want to understand exactly how he used the Siloam Inscription as his model. The Siloam Inscription (below) was written from right to left. The arrows above the first lines of the forgery and the Siloam Inscription show the direction in which the forger copied. Letters in the white areas appear in both the Siloam Inscription and the forgery. Letters tinted gray in the manuscript were added by the forger; letters tinted gray in the Siloam Inscription were omitted.

After writing ten lines, the forger came to the end of the Siloam Inscription. So he started over. The last three lines of the forgery contain letters from the first three lines of the Siloam Inscription. Again, the forger added some letters, deleted others, and changed the forms of others.