BABYLONOKIA / ARCHIVE
AN ARTWORK. A FALSE DISCOVERY. A GLOBAL STORY.

BABYLONOKIA

How a Clay Phone Fooled the World

In 2012, a clay artwork united a mobile telephone with ancient cuneiform. Later, its photograph travelled the internet as evidence of an impossible archaeological discovery. This archive separates the object, the image and the stories told about both.

Explore the timelineView the evidence
Babylonokia clay mobile phone artwork, 2012
Original artwork · photograph by Karl Weingärtner · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
THE OBJECT AND THE CLAIM

One image. Two histories.

Babylonokia is not an archaeological discovery. It is a modern artwork whose image acquired a fictional past.

01

The artwork

A clay representation of a mobile phone with cuneiform markings, made in 2012. The combination connects two eras of recorded communication.

02

The false discovery

Online posts later claimed that archaeologists had found an 800-year-old phone in Austria. No such archaeological discovery took place.

03

The investigation

Fact-checkers and researcher Cor Hendriks traced versions of the story, its transformations and its international spread.

“A real image can become evidence for a story that never happened.”
DOCUMENTED CHRONOLOGY

From artwork to internet legend

Dates refer to documented publications and investigations, not to an assumed single point of origin.

The work is created

The clay artwork is documented in 2012; the Wikimedia Commons file records a date of 6 January 2012.

↗ Original photograph

Fact checking

Snopes and other fact-checking sites explain that the supposed archaeological find was a modern artwork.

↗ Snopes – alien cellphone

The claim returns

Mimikama documents renewed circulation through social platforms and updates its fact check.

↗ Mimikama – fact check
MEDIA & METHODS

How the story changed

The archive distinguishes confirmed records from interpretations. Repetition of a claim is not independent evidence.

A changed caption

A photo of an art object was repeatedly framed as evidence of an archaeological find.

Conflicting dates

Versions referring to the 13th century BC and to an “800-year-old” object cannot both describe the same age.

Apparent corroboration

Reposts, translations and embedded videos could make the same underlying claim look like many sources.

Missing originals

Deleted pages and changing online archives make the earliest sequence difficult to establish conclusively.

Research principles. The archive does not treat speculation as established fact. Conflicting accounts are attributed to their authors; source dates and early online traces remain open to correction.
THE EVIDENCE ROOM

Follow the evidence, not the legend.

A source-led reconstruction. These records document what was published and when; they do not establish an undisputed first post or identify every person who reused the image.

E01 · PRIMARY RECORD

The object exists as an artwork

Wikimedia Commons records the image as the creator’s own work, dated 6 January 2012, with attribution to Karl Weingärtner and a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. The date is the file’s stated work date, not proof of the earliest web upload.

Inspect the image record ↗
E02 · EARLY ONLINE TRACE

A documented trace from 20 December 2014

Cor Hendriks cites a Facebook discussion reproducing an earlier caption and referring to an Art Replik Flickr page. He explicitly cautions that this is the earliest trace he found, not necessarily the first circulation of the claim.

Read Hendriks’ reconstruction ↗
E03 · CONTEMPORARY NEWS

The Austrian press answers the claim

On 31 December 2015, ORF reported the viral allegation and identified the object as a clay artwork by Karl Weingärtner. Its story documents the public correction, not the original source of the viral claim.

Read the ORF report ↗
E04 · EVOLVING FACT CHECK

The rumour changes as it travels

A January 2016 Truth or Fiction article describes the move from an ancient phone claim to alien-technology accounts. Some of that early article’s own explanations were provisional; its record is useful evidence of how the rumour was understood at the time.

Read the 2016 fact check ↗

What this archive can—and cannot—prove

Verified: an artwork and the documented existence of dated reports and image records. Attributed: Hendriks’ reconstruction of early online traces. Open: the identity of the first re-poster, the complete chain of copies and the precise origin of each altered caption. Do not mistake multiple reports for multiple independent witnesses.

DOCUMENTATION

Sources and evidence

Selected accessible sources, marked by type. Links open the original reporting, research or record.

Primary image recordOriginal photograph ↗Wikimedia Commons · 2012 / metadata

Creator attribution, date and CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Creator statementClarification on Babylonokia ↗openPR · 25 Dec 2023

Later statement by the artwork’s creator; a first-person position, not independent corroboration.

THE BOOK

BabyloNokia — How a Clay Phone Fooled the World

A narrative account of an artwork that was given a counterfeit past, following its journey from a workbench into the global media ecosystem.

Read the book sample ↗

Karl Weingärtner · English edition

KARL WEINGÄRTNERBabyloNokiaHOW A CLAY PHONE
FOOLED THE WORLD