Perfume experts help unmask remains as Egyptian
mummy.
Paris - The relics of St Joan of Arc are not the remains of the
fifteenth-century French heroine after all, according to European
experts who have analysed the sacred scraps. Instead, they say the
relics are a forgery, made from the remains of an Egyptian
mummy.
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Joan was burned at the stake in 1431 in Rouen, Normandy. The relics
were discovered in 1867 in a jar in the attic of a Paris pharmacy,
with the inscription "Remains found under the stake of Joan of Arc,
virgin of Orleans". They were recognized by the Church, and are now
housed in a museum in Chinon that belongs to the Archdiocese of
Tours.
Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist at Raymond Poincaré
Hospital in Garches, near Paris, obtained permission to study the
relics from the French church last year. He says he was
"astonished" by the results. "I'd never have thought that it could
be from a mummy."
Charlier and his colleagues didn't have much to work with: the
relics comprise a charred-looking human rib, chunks of what seem to
be carbonized wood, a 15-centimetre fragment of linen and a cat
femur — consistent with the medieval practice of throwing black
cats onto the pyre of supposed witches.
Sniff tests
The researchers used a battery of techniques to investigate the
remains, including mass, infrared and atomic-emission spectrometry,
electron microscopy, pollen analysis and, unusually, the help of
the leading 'noses' of the perfume industry: Sylvaine Delacourte
from Guerlain, and Jean-Michel Duriez from Jean Patou.
Odour analysis is a new technique for palaeopathology, but Charlier
says that he hit on the idea after being struck by the variety of
odours of other historical corpses. Delacourte and Duriez sniffed
the relics and nine other samples of bone and hair from Charlier's
lab without being told what the samples were. They were also not
allowed to confer. Both smelled hints of 'burnt plaster' and
'vanilla' in the samples from the relics.
The plaster smell was consistent with the fact that Joan of Arc was
burnt on a plaster stake, not a wooden one, to make the whole
macabre spectacle last longer. But vanilla is inconsistent with
cremation. "Vanillin is produced during decomposition of a body,"
says Charlier. "You would find it in a mummy, but not in someone
who was burnt."
Other, more conventional, evidence pointing to a mummy origin
quickly accumulated. Microscopic and chemical analysis of the black
crust on the rib and on the cat femur showed that they were not in
fact burnt, but were impregnated with a vegetal and mineral matrix,
with no trace of muscle, skin, fat or hair. "I see burnt remains
all the time in my job," says Charlier. "It was obviously not burnt
tissue."
The black material was, however, consistent with an embalming mix
of wood resins, bitumen and chemicals such as malachite. It was
also consistent with gypsum, which gives the mix its plaster smell.
The linen cloth had a coating characteristic of mummy wrappings.
And large amounts of pine pollen were present. Pine trees did not
grow in Normandy at the time that Joan of Arc was killed, but pine
resin was used widely in Egypt during embalming.
Two other lines of evidence seem to clinch the mummy origin.
Carbon-14 analysis dated the remains to between the third and sixth
centuries BC. And the spectrometry profiles of the rib, femur and
black chunks matched those from Egyptian mummies from the period,
and not those of burnt bones.
Charlier points out that mummies were used in Europe during the
Middle Ages in pharmaceutical remedies. The 1867 discovery date
also fits the period when Joan of Arc, who had been forgotten for
centuries, was rediscovered by historians and created as a national
myth. Someone might have forged the relics at this time in an
attempt to reinforce her importance.
"It is a fascinating project," says Anastasia Tsaliki, a
palaeopathologist at the University of Durham, UK. Palaeopathology
is a small but emerging field that attempts to use forensic science
to inform history, traditionally a social science. "Philippe's work
goes a step further by showing how forensic methods can be combined
with tools used in archaeometry, archaeobotany and osteology," says
Tsaliki.
Fire-proof organs
Part of the legend of Joan of Arc springs from the observation,
documented in historical records, that some of her organs resisted
the fire. Hundreds of pages of surviving manuscripts describe in
vivid detail how she was burnt three times over to try to ensure
that nothing but ash remained, and so prevent her remains being
worshipped. The observation of remaining organs was interpreted as
a miracle.
But science has another explanation. "In fact, it is very difficult
to totally cremate a body; organs such as the heart and intestines,
which have a high water content, are very resistant to fire," says
Charlier. "We see it all the time in forensics."
Debunking the relics of Joan of Arc will be less controversial than
doing the same for the Shroud of Turin, but is still likely to
generate large public interest, especially in France. The Church is
ready to accept the results, according to Charlier.