The Metropolitan Museum of Art's contested Monteleone Etruscan chariot is a "beautiful" fake, according to a top archaeologist.
Monteleone di Spoleto, the Umbrian town where the chariot was found in 1902, has been lobbying hard for three years for the New York museum to return the antiquity.
But the 600-strong community may opt to give up the fight if the case presented by professor Jerome M. Eisenberg in the latest edition of the magazine Minerva, The International Review of Ancient Art and Archeology is proven.
Jerome, a widely respected authority on forgeries in ancient art who founded the magazine in 1990, began his research on the chariot four decades ago.
While conceding that most of the chariot's peripheral components are authentic, Eisenberg lists over 70 artistic and technical features he says prove the vehicle was embellished by a master forger in the decade before it was 'discovered'.
The chariot, which was believed to be 2,600 years old, is made of bronze inlaid with ivory.
It features reliefs showing three episodes from the life of a warrior thought to be Achilles.
A woman, probably the Greek hero's mother Thetis, is holding his armour in the central panel.
One of the side panels shows Achilles in battle, while in the other, he is depicted driving a winged chariot.
Eisenberg argues many of the decorations were copied from ancient objects on show in museums before the chariot came to light, such as the 'Euphorbus Plate' in the British Museum.
In doing so, however, the forgers upset the harmony of the ancient design and gave themselves away, the archaeologist claims.
The work was thought to be the only Etruscan chariot ever found in one piece.
It recently went back on show at the Met after a painstaking, seven-year restoration.
The 1.3-metre-tall chariot was reportedly unearthed in 1902 by a local farmer, who swapped it for two cows.
It ended up in Florence the following year, where it was sold to the Met, dismantled and smuggled out of the country, allegedly with the help of the financier JP Morgan.
Monteleone's inhabitants say it is rightfully theirs, claiming the farmer had no idea of its value, while its purchasers probably did.
The Met has led the way among US museums in returning looted antiquities to Italy, signing a landmark deal with the government last year.
Nevertheless, Monteleone will face an uphill battle to get the chariot back.
The Met has owned it for over 100 years, long before the 1939 Italian law on the protection of cultural treasures, so any deadline for a legal claim on it would have lapsed long ago, experts say.
"It would be like asking France to give back the Mona Lisa," one museum spokesperson said.
