Israeli police bust Palestinian artifact thieves

JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities have arrested two Palestinians who tried to sell a looted 1,900-year-old papyrus document in Hebrew worth millions of dollars, police said Wednesday.

After receiving information on the men and tracking them for several weeks, police arrested the two Tuesday at a Jerusalem hotel where they had arranged to sell the document, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

They are suspected of violating Israeli antiquities laws by illegally possessing and trafficking in archaeological artifacts, he said, and could face several years in prison if convicted. Police are still trying to determine the origins of the document, he added.

The two men, ages 60 and 48, come from the West Bank village of Beit Sahour, outside Jerusalem, he added.

The Hebrew document, six inches by six inches (15 centimeters by 15 centimeters) is a legal text in which a widow named Miriam Bat Yaakov transferred her property to her late husband’s brother, said archaeologist Amir Ganor of the government department entrusted with fighting antiquities theft.

Dated to the 2nd century A.D., it is unique because it includes the names of Hebrew villages of the time and a date “four years from the destruction of the house of Israel,” which Ganor said was likely an allusion to the harsh Roman reprisals for a Jewish revolt that was put down around 135 A.D.

Ganor said scholars are “95 percent sure” the document is genuine, but that it would be subjected to tests to make sure it wasn’t a fake of the kind that has surfaced over the years in the Holy Land antiquities market.