The globetrotting hunt that follows vibrates with the suspense of a classic detective tale. But by then Shapira's scrolls had vanished.Īward-winning journalist Chanan Tigay set out to find the scrolls and determine Shapira's guilt or innocence for himself. With the discovery of the eerily similar Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, investigators reopened the case, wondering whether the ill-fated merchant had, in fact, discovered the first Dead Sea Scroll, decades before the rest. But before the British Museum could acquire them, Shapira's nemesis, French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau, denounced his find as a fraud. When news of the discovery leaked to the excited English press, Shapira became a household name. In the summer of 1883, Moses Wilhelm Shapira-archaeological treasure hunter and denizen of Jerusalem's bustling marketplace-arrived unannounced in London claiming to have discovered the world's oldest Bible scroll.
