Strata: The Collector

Shlomo Moussaieff, whose huge apartments on Grosvenor Square in London and on the 14th floor of the Daniel Hotel in Herzliya, Israel, are stuffed with important Biblical antiquities, lives on the edge of legality. Moussaieff (pictured) was to be the government’s star witness in the ongoing criminal trial in Jerusalem in which an antiquities collector and a prominent antiquities dealer now stand in the dock charged with forging and dealing in forged antiquities. As a witness, Moussaieff fizzled. Worse, he turned on the government! Asked how an inscribed wine decanter that may have been used by the priests in Solomon’s Temple got from Jerusalem to his London apartment without an export license, Moussaieff replied, “It had wings.”

The 83-year-old is not afraid of the law. What if they charge him with smuggling? Are they going to put him in jail? “So what?” he testified, “I will pay a fine. Thank God I have it.”