Genuine fakes

Genuine fakes. Original forgery. 
Real counterfeits.

'Forgery' was a word introduced in 1574.

A counterfeit is a fake or a forgery.
For their term for forgery, the ancient Greeks drew on the root word “plasma,” meaning to form or mold, one sense of which was to form or mold deceitfully.

 As the practice apparently became more common, the Romans coined at least two words for it. One being “Falsum,” the legal term for fraud, referred to anything deceptive and was related to “fallere,” meaning to deceive.  ....

1 - Christoforus Colombus

“In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two/ 

Columbus sailed the ocean blue. 

To prove that the old maps were true.” 

The Vinland Map was, ipso facto, considered a fake, because Columbus was the first and only discoverer of America. It was bought by Yale University in 1957. But doubts existed nevertheless. Their position was assessed in 2009 by world-class experts in document authentication at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Results of the Danes’ exhaustive study at Copenhagen’s International Conference on the History of Cartography were announced by Rene Larsen, rector of the School of Conservation: "We have so far found no reason to believe that the Vinland Map is the result of a modern forgery. All the tests that we have done over the past five years — on the materials and other aspects — do not show any signs of fraud."

       Calendars and history 

In the year AD 499 the Hindu mathematician Aryabhata calculated pi as 3.1416 and the length of the solar year as 365.358 days.

 At much the same time he conceived the idea that the earth was a sphere spinning on its own axis and revolving around the sun. He thought that the shadows of the earth falling on the moon caused eclipses. 

One wonders what all the fuss was about when Copernicus ‘discovered’ some of the above nearly a thousand years later. Indian thought in the Middle Ages was in several areas far ahead of European ideas.  

(Ideas. A history by P Watson (2004)

• 2- Michaelangelo Buonarotti

That’s right, one of the most famous renaissance painters in history, painter of the Sistine Chapel and other priceless works, began his career by passing off an early marble sculpture as an ancient Roman statue in order to sell it for a higher price. He intentionally damaged and aged the sculpture, entitled “Sleeping Eros” by burying it in an art dealer’s yard, so that it could later be “discovered” as an ancient relic.

Article HERE

How a Forged Sculpture Boosted Michelangelo’s Early Career

1.  Despite his promising future, back in 1496 he was just another starving artist trying to find ways to fund his art. 
2.  At 21, he had the talent and the passion, but not the name necessary to sell his work at a profitable price. 
3.  Faced with this dilemma, Michelangelo opted for the seemingly logical solution: he forged a classical sculpture by artificially aging it.

3- Miguel de Cervantes 

29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616