Artemidorus Ephesius


Artemidorus of Ephesus was a Greek geographer, who flourished around 100 BC. His work in eleven books is often quoted by Strabo. What was thought to be a fragment of his work was determined to be a forgery.

The Artemidorus papyrus

A papyrus containing a fragment already known as part of book 2 of his work has recently been discovered. It is known as the Artemidorus papyrus; it also contains the first map of the Iberian peninsula, and many illustrations.
This long papyrus roll was written in the first century BC, maybe in Alexandria. The copyist left spaces for illustrations of maps, and then sent it to a painter's workshop to have them inserted. But the painter designed only a partial map, which appears to be what the author believed was the shape of the southwestern Iberian peninsula.
The map is incomplete and has no names, and is perhaps the wrong map for the space in the papyrus. This ruined the roll. Instead the blank spaces were used as scrap papyrus for rough drafts, and to keep a catalog of drawings for clients. The drawings include pictures of real animals, such as giraffes, tigers and pelicans, as well as mythical ones, such as the griffin, marine snake, or a dog with wings. In addition, pictures of heads, feet and hands were drawn until there were no blank spaces.
The papyrus was then presumably sold as scrap paper. It was found in the early 1900s in the form of cartonnage, as a filling for some kind of cavity. The cartonnage was sold to an Egyptian collector in whose hands it remained for fifty years. It then travelled around Europe, before being bought by a German collector who opened it and discovered the remains of the papyrus roll. It has holes in it, but because it got damp at some stage, even when there are holes, the drawings on those parts of the papyrus have been mirrored on the facing part of the roll.
The papyrus - which was bought by a foundation for $3,369,850 - is now owned by Turin's Banco di San Paolo.
A 2007 study by Canfora asserts that the text of the papyrus cannot be by Artemidorus as it contains words not available except in Byzantine Greek, and that the papyrus may be a forgery, perhaps by Constantine Simonides. Richard Janko, in Classical Review 59.2 pp. 403-410 has offered arguments favoring the case for forgery.
On 20 July 2016, following a report submitted by Luciano Canfora on 28 October 2013, the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated preliminary investigations into the allegation of fraud. On 29 November 2018, the Turin Public Prosecutor's Office requested the dismissal of criminal charges against the antique dealer Serop Simonian who sold the papyrus in 2004. On the basis of circumstantial evidence —p. 33 of the investigative report : “quanto meno sulla base di elementi indiziari gravi, precisi e concordanti”— the Prosecutor concluded that the papyrus is a forgery of the 19th century and that Simonian’s fraud of 2004 cannot be prosecuted due to the lapse of the prescriptive period, although the Prosecutor’s report does not state the antique dealer was aware of the alleged forgery. The investigation was carried out without new scientific tests on the papyrus.
On 16 June 2019, the results of yet unpublished chemical analyses were announced by the Italian TV program Report, which stated the presence of hexagonal diamond in the ink of the Artemidorus papyrus. Journalist Giulia Presutti and restorer Cecilia Hausmann claimed that “the hexagonal diamond is an element that is found in nature only in meteoric rock in Sri Lanka or Canada”, “consequently, not in Egypt” and “it is an industrial product that appeared more or less in the 19th century”. Although presented by classicist Federico Condello as the ultimate evidence of falsity of the papyrus, these claims are unfounded. Hexagonal diamond, another name for lonsdaleite, was first identified in 1967 in samples from Meteor Crater. Since then, it has been found in other places where meteorites striked the Earth, notably in Germany, Russia, Egypt. The technology to artificially produce lonsdaleite —more difficult to produce than synthetic diamonds— was tested in the second half of the 20th century and in the 21st century.