Episode 220 - The Dirt Plays Pretend

TRY THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK TO LEARN ABOUT THE PAST, FAST!

We're talking scams, frauds, fakers, and pretenders this week.

Anna just hauled a whole household halfway across the country and is still recovering. So Amber has stepped up with a super fun episode about some of the trickiest pretenders from history (ancient and modern). Tune into some Old Assyrian family drama, unwrap misleading mummies, discover a heroic art movement, and more!

For further reading:

Behistun Inscription (with English translation) (Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative) 

Achaemenes (Encyclopedia Iranica)

The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (Project Gutenberg)

How Ancient Scammers Tricked Consumers (World of Chinese)

The secret letters of history's first-known businesswomen (BBC Worklife)

Women of Assur: and Kanesh Texts from the Archives of Assyrian Merchants (via WorldCat)

Demosthenes’ Against Zenothemis (Perseus)

Bottomry (Wikipedia)

A Third of Animal Mummies Contain no Animals at All (Smithsonian)

Disumbrationist School of Art (Museum of Hoaxes)

Bogus pupil set to lose place at university (The Independent)

Exclusive: Brian MacKinnon Tells The Herald ‘How I Was Unmasked’ (The Herald)

Brandon Lee: The model school pupil who was a 30-year-old imposter (BBC)