Historical forgery

A deliberately fabricated or altered object or document presented as genuine evidence from the past. It can distort historical accounts, cultural heritage, and beliefs about authenticity.

Provenance: The documented history of an object's ownership, custody, and location. A fabricated ownership trail can make a forged object appear to have a credible past.
Donation of Constantine: A forged imperial decree claiming that Constantine granted extensive authority to the papacy. Its medieval acceptance shaped political arguments before linguistic analysis exposed its later origin.
Constantine Simonides: A nineteenth-century Greek calligrapher and manuscript dealer known for producing and selling forged documents. His career links manuscript expertise to the deliberate manufacture of false historical evidence.
Historical revisionism: The reinterpretation or rewriting of accounts of the past, sometimes through selective or distorted evidence. Fabricated evidence can lend false authority to a revisionist account.
Authentication: The process of establishing whether an object or document is genuine. Authentication tests the claims that a historical forgery is designed to pass.
Piltdown Man: A fabricated fossil assemblage presented in 1912 as the remains of an early human ancestor. The case shows how a forged object can exploit expectations in scientific debate.
Moses Shapira: A Jerusalem antiquities dealer whose claims about purported ancient manuscripts became a major nineteenth-century controversy. The Shapira Scrolls episode centers on his contested role as dealer and claimant.
Cultural heritage: Inherited material objects, places, practices, and knowledge valued by a community. Forged artifacts can confuse what is preserved, studied, or claimed as heritage.
Paleography: The study of historical handwriting and writing systems. Comparing scripts and letter forms can expose a document written in the wrong period.
Hitler Diaries: A set of forged diaries attributed to Adolf Hitler and publicized in 1983. Their rapid exposure illustrates the danger of trusting provenance claims over material tests.

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