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  3. In 2001, a secret meeting of leading Israeli archaeologists are shown a remarkable artifact. It’s a stone tablet, apparently fro

In 2001, a secret meeting of leading Israeli archaeologists are shown a remarkable artifact. It’s a stone tablet, apparently fro

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问题     In 2001, a secret meeting of leading Israeli archaeologists are shown a remarkable artifact. It’s a stone tablet, apparently from 1000 B. C. The writing on its face describes repairs to the temple of King Solomon. It is the first archaeological evidence ever found of this legendary building. The relic caused a sensation. But this was only just the start.
【C1】______
    These were apparently the result of the tablet surviving the fire which, according to the bible, destroyed the temple when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem in 586 B. C.
    The stone tablet was offered for sale to the Israel Museum, home to many of Israel’s greatest treasures. Rumors suggested the asking price was as high as $10 million.
【C2】______     To make matters more complex, the stone itself had disappeared again. The Israeli Antiquities Authority wanted answers. A nine-month search for the mysterious stranger who had first appeared with the stone eventually led them to a private detective who had been hired by a well known antiquities collector, Oded Golan.
    Golan insisted he too was just a front man(名誉负责人)for another collector. But the authorities were suspicious. He was known to be the owner of the James Ossuary(尸骨罐), another extraordinary artifact which had appeared a couple of years earlier. This was a burial box with an inscription linking it to Jesus’ brother.
【C3】______
    Looking at the stone, several linguists said "fake". Some of the Hebrew, they claimed, was not ancient. Other experts claimed that so little is known of ancient Hebrew that it’s impossible to be sure.
    The committee turned to geology. Dr. Yuval Goren, a geo-arehaeologist and head of-the Archaeological Institute at Tel-Aviv University, soon found evidence that a team of sophisticated forgers had led the earlier experts astray.
【C4】______
    The authorities presented their conclusions. They announced that the stone tablet and the James Ossuary were elaborate fakes.
【C5】______
    Some archaeologists have now concluded that everything that came to market in the last 20 years without clear provenance should be considered a fake. Many of these objects, like the stone tablet which started the investigation, were cynically playing on the desire of many of the collectors to see the bible confirmed as history. For those in search of the temple of Solomon—their goal is as far away as ever.
[A]The authorities raided Golan’s apartment and recovered both the ossuary and the elusive stone. It was time to establish once and for all if both were genuine. So they set up a committee of linguists and scientists to examine them.
[B]The patina(铜绿)on the stpne had in fact been manufactured artificially. The charcoal particles, which produced the convincing radiocarbon date, had been added by hand. And the gold fragments hinting at an ancient fire were a clever final addition. [C]But the museum needed to know where the stone had come from. Even its owner was a mystery.
[D]For authentification, the tablet was taken to the Geological Survey of Israel. Here, after a battery of tests, including radiocarbon dating, scientists officially pronounced the stone to be genuine. The tests even revealed microscopic particles of gold in the outer layer of stone.
[E]The stone tablet has a 15-line inscription in ancient Hebrew that resembles descriptions in Kings II, 12: 1-6, 11-17, said Israel’s Geological Survey, which examined the artifact. The words refer to King Joash, who ruled the area 2, 800 years ago. In it, the king tells priests to take "holy money. .. to buy quarry stones and timber and copper and labor to carry out the duty with faith. ""If the work is completed well, the Lord will protect his people with blessing, " reads the last sentence of the inscription.
[F]According to the Bible, The Temple of Solomon was the Israelites’ first permanent "house" of God, built specifically to house the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark, a gold covered wooden chest containing the Ten Commandments, had originally been carried by the chosen people and Moses through the desert.
[G]But who was producing these fakes and how? Dr. Goren decided to piece together how the stone tablet had been made. He tracked the origin of the stone itself—apparently a building block taken from a Crusader castle. It was even possible to work out how the fake patina had been manufactured and the ingredients used. What was clear was the team of forgers included experts in a range of disciplines.
【C1】
选项
答案D
解析 要证明是文物，自然要经过文物局的验证(authentification)；另外根据第二段也可以推出，此处应该介绍对该石碑的检验。地质勘测局经过一系列的测试，包括利用测定放射性碳元素的含量来推测石碑的年龄，专家最后的结论是此物为真品。检验过程中，通过显微镜甚至可以看到覆盖在石头表层的黄金颗粒。
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