We all expect the exhibits in museums such as Oxford’s Ashmolean to be genuine. But Oxford does feature in Egyptian Fakes (Flammarion, £25) by art historian and novelist Jean-Jacques Feichter.

He tells the story of a so-called ushabti, a statue purporting to come from an Egyptian tomb, which graced the collections of the Bodleian Library from the 17th century, before being transferred to the Ashmolean in 1937. It was, in fact, made in the 17th century using a greenish stone similar to Egyptian faience with hieroglyphics copied from a scholarly book.

According to Feichter, Helen Whitehouse, curator at the Ashmolean, sees this not as a fake but as a playful re-creation.

The author says: “Perhaps originally created in good faith simply as reproductions, it was only when their primary destination and origin had been forgotten that these pieces became forgeries.”

Feichter tells the stories of some famous fakes and concludes by asking whether we should admire them as works of art, despite their inauthenticity.