The making of faked and forged or counterfeit antiquities constitutes an issue of major importance that until now has not been given the attention it deserves. Faked and forged or counterfeit antiquities mislead archaeological researchers, falsify historical truth, and distort our picture of the past. In this study, the author shows that a lead sheet from Sicily now kept at the Archaeological Museum of Agrigento which bears an incised Dionysiac scene with a ship is a fake. He then examines the effects which the assessment of the sheet as genuine has had on scholarship and investigates the issue of forged antiquities from antiquity to the present day.
