Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

Because the sketch exercise book was already in hand, Liang En was not in a hurry to use the cards to check the origin of the sketch exercise book, but continued to pay attention to the auction.

Soon, the previous warm-up lots found their new owners, and then came the protagonists of today's auction.

The Tiffany necklace that Liang En had seen before was the first to be put up for auction. The atmosphere on the scene was ignited in an instant, and the price continued to rise. Finally, it was sold for US$650,000.

As each item was put on the auction table for auction, except for a few items that were auctioned at the lowest price, the remaining items were sold at prices that everyone was satisfied with.

"The next auction item comes from ancient Egypt and the UK. It was once the coffin of a princess, but it left Egypt and came to the UK more than two hundred years ago, and has been preserved to this day."

Just as the auctioneer loudly introduced the next auction item, two crew members carefully pushed a painted Egyptian wooden coffin out of the side of the room on a trolley, and then placed it on the table.

"Next, everyone can come on stage to watch this auction for five minutes, and then continue our auction. By the way, the reserve price of this ancient Egyptian painted wooden coffin is US$400,000."

In fact, compared with the ancient Egyptian bronze sickle sword that was previously sold for $700,000, the value of this Egyptian wooden coffin is obviously higher in history. It's a pity that this thing is too niche, so it can't be priced high.

After all, whether in the East or the West, things related to death are always taboo. So unless it is a national treasure-level cultural relic like Tutankhamun's golden coffin, the price will definitely differ a lot.

Soon, Liang En stood beside the coffin with Bruce, and then began to inspect the coffin up and down.

As soon as he started checking, Liang En noticed the hieroglyphs written on the inner cover of the coffin. Because words often contain the most important information.

The inner lid of the coffin is densely filled with text written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the translation is part of the famous ancient Egyptian "Book of the Dead".

For the ancient Egyptians, the "Book of the Dead" was an important existence that could help them obtain eternal life after death, because only through the guidance of the "Book of the Dead" could the souls of the deceased be redeemed.

Therefore, the ancient Egyptians would write the contents of the "Book of the Dead" on every inch of the place related to the deceased, including but not limited to papyrus carried with them, on amulets, on the walls of tombs or on coffins.

However, after checking the common contents on the inside of the coffin lid and turning to the side of the coffin, Liang En found that there was something wrong with the text that appeared on the side.

Because he discovered that the inscription on the side of the coffin was just the name of the ancient Egyptians. But under normal circumstances, they would engraved all the titles of the deceased before the name. Only civilians with no status would only engraved one name. .

More importantly, the appearance of the coffin is enough to infer that the coffin should belong to a female priest, but the name carved on the side of the coffin not only does not have any title, but is also the name of a man.

But surprisingly, there was a carbon-14 identification certificate placed next to the coffin, which clearly stated that the coffin indeed came from the 17th Dynasty of ancient Egypt.

After discovering two contradictory pieces of evidence, Liang En fell into thinking. Finally, he chose to use an [Identification (N)] to find out what it was.

Because he was really curious about what was behind this painted wooden coffin that seemed to reveal some kind of weirdness, not to mention that he didn't want to cause any problems in this commission.

[Starting from Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in the 19th century, Europe once again became obsessed with Egypt. Unlike before, which only pursued mummies that were said to have some magical medicinal properties, this time Europeans pursued everything related to Egypt. 】

[As a result, everything in Egypt immediately became expensive throughout Europe. In this case, the counterfeiting of cultural relics became a natural thing. 】

[The simplest form of counterfeiting is that it is fake from beginning to end. However, soon as the quality of people working in this industry improved, various high-end fakes also appeared on the market. 】

[For example, this Egyptian painted wooden coffin is one of the top fakes. The counterfeiters used some ancient wood to make the main body of the coffin and decorated it with the same ancient raw materials, so they were able to deceive the experts. . 】

"It turns out this thing is a high-end fake!" Looking at the words that appeared in front of him, Liang En's eyes widened suddenly.

To be honest, it is normal for him to be deceived in this regard. After all, he is an expert on ancient Egyptian writing and not an expert on cultural relics, so it is normal for him to be timid when facing such high-end fakes.

As for why the previous appraisers did not see it, the reason is very simple. On the one hand, after this thing was collected very early, future generations will subconsciously think that the thing is real.

On the other hand, the counterfeiters used a large amount of ancient materials in order to be as authentic as possible, so those who conducted carbon-14 inspections through sampling analysis were naturally unlikely to find any problems.

It's just that maybe the counterfeiters didn't expect that those ancient Egyptian texts that looked like heavenly books could actually be deciphered, so Liang En saw the flaw today.

"How is this thing?" After the inspection time was over, Bruce, who sat back in his seat, asked Liang En in a low voice, "Is it worth my money?"

"My personal suggestion is to forget it, because this painted wooden coffin -" After hearing Bruce's question, Liang En immediately said what could be said about the doubtful points he had just observed.

"Are you sure?" After hearing Liang En's quick explanation, Bruce suddenly became nervous and asked in a low voice. "You can't joke about this kind of thing."

"I will never joke about this." Liang En said seriously. "Unless my previous deciphering of ancient Egyptian texts was all wrong."

"If that's the case, I think we're going to be in the limelight." Bruce smiled, then stood up and shouted to the auctioneer who was about to start the auction. "Stop the auction. This Egyptian painted coffin is fake."

"Are you sure, Mr. Bruce?" As soon as Bruce finished speaking, the organizer of the auction, Mr. Scord, also stood up and looked at him and asked.

"I think you know the rules of our auction, so I hope you can come up with reasonable evidence. Otherwise, I can only ban you from participating in the auction on this boat."

"I discovered this problem." Liang En also raised his hand at this time and said, "Because I found that the words on this coffin and the shape of the coffin cannot match together at all -"

In the next five minutes, Liang En explained the flaws he found on the coffin in a short and plain language.

"——This is what happened. I think the ancient Egyptian text had not been deciphered when the fraud was made, so the other party made a mistake when copying it according to a certain model, and I happened to be able to translate the ancient Egyptian text."

"So that's it." Mr. Scord nodded, and then looked at a slightly bald middle-aged man sitting below. "Sorry, Mr. Locke, I think the thing you sent for auction this time is a fake."