On April 1, 1896, the Louvre Museum announced with great fanfare the acquisition of a magnificent piece, a gold tiara recently discovered in the Crimean peninsula in perfect condition and whose antiquity dates back to no less than the end of the century. III B.C.
On the advice of Albert Kaempfen, director of the National Museums of France, the Louvre had paid the not inconsiderable amount of 200,000 gold francs for her.
The piece bore an inscription in Greek that read:the council and citizens of Olbia honor the great and invincible king Saitafernes . The tiara, made of solid gold plate, was the confirmation of the legend of this Scythian king, who towards the end of the 3rd century B.C. he would have subdued some Greek colonies of Pontus Euxino, including Olbia, and would only have agreed to leave the city after receiving precious gifts, among which was the tiara.
It had all started a year earlier, in 1895, when a Viennese newspaper echoed several discoveries made by Crimean peasants. In February of the following year some Russian antiquities were exhibited in the Austrian capital. from those finds, including the tiara.
It was about 18 centimeters high and weighed about half a kilo, made of solid gold in the shape of a pointed dome and decorated with scenes from the daily life of the Scythians and the Iliad, including the fight between Agamemnon and Achilles over Briseis. Both the British Museum and the Imperial Court Museum in Vienna declined their purchase, but the Louvre took the bait.
For several years the tiara was exhibited in the Louvre, which defended its authenticity despite the fact that practically from the beginning some experts expressed their reluctance. The strangest thing of all was the good state of preservation for such an ancient object. In fact, the prestigious German archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler, who had the opportunity to examine it, was perplexed by its lack of patina, in addition to the mixture of styles of the engravings.
It took seven years for the whole thing to be cleared up. A goldsmith from the Ukrainian city of Odessa (located on the shores of the Black Sea, near the supposed place of discovery) had found out that the Louvre was exhibiting the piece and went to Paris in 1903 to undo the wrong.
His name was Israel Rouchomovsky and the story he told the museum officials left them stunned. According to Rouchomovsky, two years before the Louvre acquired the tiara, two individuals had come to his workshop in Odessa.
They asked him to make it, with precise instructions on its design and examples of pieces found in recent excavations in ancient Greece, stating that it was a gift for an archaeologist friend. They paid him 7,000 francs for it.
Since the Louvre refused to believe him, he had to prove that he was capable of exactly reproducing a part of the tiara, which he did. Those responsible for the museum, embarrassed, had to remove the tiara from public display, and the press of the time was fattened with ridicule and ridicule about it.
Rouchomovsky, on the other hand, was congratulated for his good work. He settled in Paris, where he lived until his death in 1934, and even received a gold medal at the Salon des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
The tiara followed a certainly surprising path. Considered first a work of art, and then an obvious forgery, it eventually became a work of art again when, in 1997, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem borrowed it for an exhibition on the work of Israel Rouchomovsky.
Before that, in 1954, it had been exhibited again, on that occasion in the Hall of Forgeries of the Louvre. But the thing does not stop there. In 2009 the Superior Museum of Art in Atlanta borrowed it for an exhibition on the Louvre Museum.
Today, the British Museum owns and displays a copy of the tiara, as does the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.