Though the Israel Museum has engaged expert committees to examine the authenticity of the ivory pomegranate and the bulla of Jeremiah’s scribe, it has yet to properly examine the Seal of Maadana. American epigraphist Christopher Rollston, who visited the Israel Museum in 2013 to examine the seal under a microscope for a forthcoming paper, concluded the seal is a forgery, arguing the tool used to engrave the seal was of a different size than tools that engraved seals of the same period found in proper excavations. Ancient seals resist definitive scientific testing, however. Radiocarbon testing can date the organic material on bits of string stuck to a bulla, and thermoluminescence testing can determine when one came in contact with fire. But with a seal, there are no altered chemical properties to check. It’s just cut rock.

“Of course it’s forged,” Deutsch said when I visited him in late 2013.

It has been difficult for Israeli officialdom to embrace the scholarly consensus about the Seal of Maadana. Calling relics like this into question could be seen as unpatriotic, casting doubt on the roots of Jews in the land, undermining the very existence of the Jewish state. “Those who connect archaeological sciences to identity, to the issue of national identity, are setting themselves up for a fall,” Raphael Greenberg, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University who studies the politics of Israeli archaeology, told me recently. “Archaeology can change. I mean, interpretations can change. And things assumed to be one thing turn out to be another.”

In the 30 years since the Bank of Israel turned the Maadana into one of the country’s most ubiquitous icons, it has had ample opportunity to publicly address questions regarding the seal’s authenticity and determine whether it should continue to adorn Israeli currency. Instead, the Bank has passed the buck.

Ahituv, the Bible scholar, contacted the Bank of Israel in recent years and asked why it had not stopped circulating the half shekel coin. He said he received no answer. Dov Genichovsky, a veteran Israeli journalist who sat on the Bank’s currency design committee from the time it picked Maadana’s lyre for the half shekel until today, said Bank officials never told the committee there were doubts about the seal. Not that it would have mattered to him. “Archaeologists will argue for one hundred years,” he said on the phone. “Why should the respected gentlemen of the committee enter the debaters’ shoes and decide?”

Rachel Barkay, the numismatist who brought Batya Bayer’s doubts to the attention of the currency department, and who later became the Bank of Israel’s chief numismatist, never mentioned the seal’s suspect authenticity in any Bank literature and would decline comment whenever the forgery rumor came up during her guided tours at the Bank. When the Maadana motif was chosen, she said, no one on the design committee was aware of any doubts about the artifact. Today, Barkay does say she tends to believe the seal might be a forgery. But, she added, it was not the bank’s responsibility to rule on its authenticity.

I met with Moti Fein, the head of Bank of Israel’s currency department, in 2014. (Fein has since left his post.) A spokesperson for the Bank was in the room with us. The conversation took place on the condition that I send him the quotes I wanted to print for his approval. When I did this the spokesman rejected the quotes, and provided this statement:

There is no proof that the “Maadana, Daughter of the King” seal is not authentic. And even if it isn’t, it bears no importance in terms of the coin itself, many years after it was issued. The public can rest assured that the coin in its hands is legal tender in every way, and the Bank of Israel has no intention of changing or replacing the coin, except during a complete replacement of the coin series if and when this takes place in the coming years.

Last June, a curator from the Hecht Museum in Haifa, which displays many ancient seals, coins, and relics that the late Reuben Hecht had purchased, came to the Israel Museum to collect the Seal of Maadana. Representatives from the Hecht were upset it had been taken off display and maintained that there was no proof that it was a forgery. They wanted it to be displayed in Israel again. Negotiations had dragged on for years. The Israel Museum finally agreed to give the Maadana to the Hecht on long-term loan, on condition that the display label include a disclaimer stating that its authenticity was the subject of debate. The seal is now on display at the Hecht.

So, the Israel Museum no longer provides a home for this contentious artifact. But its gift shop continues to sell replicas on sterling silver bracelets, pendants, bookmarks, and rings, accompanied by a pamphlet calling it an ancient Hebrew seal of the seventh century B.C.E. On a recent visit, a saleswoman told me it is a popular bat mitzvah gift.