Hills of various heights are scattered all over the Black Sea region, on the banks of the Dnieper and its tributaries. Some are of natural origin, while others keep the memory of the ancient owners of these lands - the Cimmerians, Sards, Scythians - and hide the ancient burials of the leaders, who were seen off on their last journey with rich gifts. The chief of these gifts was gold. What is this - "Scythian gold"? A cursed treasure of ancient burial mounds or someone's skillful forgery?
Golden fever
It all started in November 1830, when the Kul-Oba mound ("Mountain of Ash" in translation from Tatar) in Taurida was comprehensively explored by order of the Governor-General Prince Mikhail Vorontsov. As a result, it was possible to discover an almost untouched burial of the Scythian king, as well as mountains of treasures, the quantity and value of which shocked the imagination of the public, since then the Crimea was considered a repository of untold wealth and great history. Further, the discovery of new tombs followed one after another - Chertomlyk, Solokha, Kelermess and others. But the blood of the inhabitants was even more agitated by the rumors creeping from the south about how this or that lucky man discovered the next burial. A stream of Scythian gold poured into Russia and Europe, half of which actually had nothing to do with the Scythians.
If there is no treasure …
At the end of the 19th century, the mining of Scythian gold became a real trade in the south of Russia. It acquired an unprecedented scale in the vicinity of ancient Olbia, the ruins of which were found not far from Ochakov. Here, on Repnin Street, in 1895, merchants of the III guild Leiba and Shepsel Gokhmany moved from Odessa.
Previously, they traded mainly in counterfeit marble slabs with antique epitaphs, but soon decided to expand the business and take on precious metal products. In the back rooms of their shop, the Hohmans opened a real underground workshop. The products of this production were intended for gullible tourists and visiting "collectors" from the Russian hinterland. These treasure hunters were usually given several genuine trifles by traders, and among them was a fake rarity that they bought without looking. But the Gokhmans dreamed of a qualitative breakthrough, which happened soon, when an unknown person knocked on the door of the shop of the Odessa jeweler and engraver Rukhomovsky.
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Mozyr nugget
Israel Rukhomovskii was born in the Polesye town of Mozyr in 1860. Rejecting a career as a rabbi, the boy decided to become a jeweler. But his parents were sorry for the money for his education, and Israel had to get to everything on its own. When he went to Kiev to show his products, there was not a single jeweler (!) Who could compete with him in skill. And his works began to be branded by more famous jewelers, for example, the famous competitor of the house of Faberge, Joseph Marshak.
Barely making ends meet, Rukhomovskiy, together with his wife and six children, decided to move to Odessa. There he opened a shop without a sign, but without any advertising, his name soon became known throughout the city. Including the brothers Gohman, who scoured the south in search of talents.
Tiara Saitaferna
At the excavations of ancient Olbia in 1822, a stele was discovered with a dedication to one of the inhabitants of the polis, Protogen, who donated rather large funds to the city three times in order to buy off the Scythian king Saitafern. The text on the stele was not completely preserved, and this broken-off lower part led Leibu Gokhman to an interesting idea. He sent his agent to Ru-Khomovsky, who was in need of work, who supplied the jeweler with the necessary reference literature and ordered him to make a "royal tiara", allegedly as a gift to some Kharkov professor. In fact, the tiara created by Israel Rukhomovsky in eight months of painstaking work was intended for completely different purposes. Forged of pure gold, decorated with three embossed high reliefs encircling it with scenes from ancient mythology and the life of the Scythians,the tiara was a magnificent sight. The lower and central ornaments were separated by an inscription made in the same style as the dedication on the stele of Protogen: “To the invincible and great Tsar Saitofernes. Council and people of Olvio-politov. " For his labors, Rukhomovskii received a considerable sum - 1,800 rubles, but his customers did not go to waste either.
Fool's Day
In early 1896, the Hohman brothers smuggled the tiara out to Vienna. There they showed it, among several original finds, to the directors of the Vienna Imperial Museum Bruno Bucher and Hugo Leyschnin-gu. The experts invited by the directors unanimously declared that it was a real rarity, but the amount requested by the Gokhmans turned out to be too high for the Austro-Hungarian budget, and the brothers returned to Russia, entrusting the further fate of their "find" to local resellers Anton Foigel and Josef Szymansky. And they went straight to the Louvre. There, the tiara made a splash. Director of the Museum Department of Fine Arts Albert Kempfen brought in the famous brothers Solomon and Theodor Reinach, as well as several other specialists, who unconditionally recognized the tiara as genuine. Inspired, Foigel and Shimansky asked the Louvre for this "rarity" an astronomical amount - 200,000 francs. The museum did not have such money, but Kempfen received it from patrons under state guarantees, and only then the parliament approved the deal by a special act. The purchase - quite symbolically - took place on April 1, 1896. And just a couple of days later, Rukhomovsky's tiara adorned the Louvre.
However, her adventures have just begun.
The secret always becomes apparent
Already in August 1896, scientists from Russia began to share their doubts about the Scythian "rarity", especially the famous historian and literary critic Alexander Veselovsky, who directly wrote that the tiara was made in Ochakov, and the Odessa scholar Alexander Berthier-Delagarde, praising the work of an unknown jeweler, wrote: "Is it possible that the Olvians dared to write such a thing on the forehead of the formidable king?" - referring to the dedication created by Rukhomovsky. But only seven years later, on March 19, 1903, when a certain forger of art objects, working under the pseudonym Rudolf Elina, boastfully told Parisian journalists that the "crown of Semiramis" was made by his hand, the newspapers had at their disposal a letter from the former Odessa citizen Karl Lifshits, who directly indicated on Israel Rukhomovsky as the author of the tiara.
The Louvre tried for a long time to ignore the hype that arose in the press, but when other witnesses began to confirm Lifshitz's words, a commission created by the government under the leadership of orientalist Charles Clermont-Ganneau decided to summon Rukhomovsky himself to France in order to sort things out on the spot.
Fake glory
The jeweler who arrived in Paris secretly brought with him sketches and forms, several samples of his other works. At a meeting with members of the commission conducting the investigation, Rukhomovsky gave testimony for eight hours continuously, calling from memory the composition of the alloy and listing all the flaws he had made specially. And when, at the request of distrustful scientists, he reproduced an exact copy of one of the tiara fragments in front of their eyes, all doubts about his honesty disappeared, although the stubborn Reinachi brothers, in spite of everything, continued to insist that no one could do such a thing in our time! “Do I have to make a new tiara for them to believe? I doubt, however, that these gentlemen will be convinced even then - for the simple reason that they simply do not want to be convinced,”Rukhomovsky wrote in his memoirs.
Clouds thickened over the leadership of the Louvre, the director of the French national museums, Kempfen, resigned, and for Rukhomovsky himself, the "exposure" turned into unexpected glory. He became incredibly popular, he was awarded the medal of the Salon of Decorative Arts, and one American businessman even offered to buy the tiara from the French government and, together with Rukhomovsky, send it on a world tour. But national pride did not allow the French to disgrace themselves again.
Continued story
Cuddled by the public's attention, Israel Rukhomovsky, without thinking twice, moved with his whole family to Paris in 1909 and began working there in the repair shops of the Louvre. His son Solomon also became a famous jeweler. Rukhomovsky left an interesting memoir in which he warmly recalls his Odessa friends, without a word mentioning Leiba and Shepsel Gokhmanov.
Meanwhile, the history of the "Scythian treasures" did not end with the exposure of the "tiara of Saitafern". How many "antiques" the Gokhmans actually bought from Rukhomovsky in Odessa is still unknown. Most of his works - 80 works - settled in the collection of the philanthropist William Raitling, who acquired them as genuine antiquities, but decided not to part with the masterpieces after the jeweler gained worldwide fame.
Meanwhile, Leiba Gokhman, who headed the family business after Shepsel's retirement, did not even think of giving up a profitable business, but began to trade mainly in silver, which almost no one had faked before. The first fake - "the mask of the bearded god" - was sold to the Odessa Museum, which he had repeatedly deceived, in 1906, and then he sold a whole batch of silver vases and rhytons to private collectors and even … to the Historical Museum in Moscow.
Further more. Gokhman felt cramped in Russia, and in 1908 he sent a carriage (!) Of precious fakes to Germany, which he successfully sold abroad and after the revolution.
In 1962, the Louvre became a victim of his entrepreneurial spirit again, the museum collection of which acquired a silver vessel in the shape of a boar's head with relief figures of Scythians. As the French believed, this is "a monument of ancient culture of paramount importance." Alas! The Soviet expert Anna Peredolskaya established that this vessel … was also produced in the workshop of Gokhman, presumably by Rukhomovsky.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №51. Author: Victor Arshansky