25 December 2004	Saturday	12 Ziqa'ad 1425

JERUSALEM, Dec 24: An ivory arti fact in the shape of a pomegranate thought to be the only surviving relic of the Temple of Solomon has turned out to be a fake, the Israel Museum said on Friday.

The pomegranate bears a nine-letter inscription in ancient Hebrew which a French researcher, Andre Lemaire, claimed in the early 1980s to be an acronym for a phrase that means "sacred donation for the priests of God's house".

Based on Mr Lemaire's findings, the arti fact was believed to be the head of a sceptre carried by priests at the Temple of Solomon which was destroyed in 586 BC, according to the Bible.

But experts have found that the pomegranate, bought by the Israel Museum in 1988 for 600,000 dollars (444,000 euros), derives from a much earlier period, while the inscription was a recently added fake, Haaretz newspaper reported.

"It was too good to be true and there have been doubts about its authenticity from the start, but it is only recently that the proof has been found that it is a fake," archaeologist Tali Onran said. Experts discovered that the ivory actually came from hippopotamus teeth which existed some eight centuries before the date attributed to the pomegranate. -AFP