Louvre's jars contain Ramses II's organs. Not.
PARIS -- One of the star exhibits at the Louvre's egyptology wing, a collection of four jars said to have contained the embalmed organs of Egypt's greatest pharoah, Rameses II, have a sadly less glamorous vintage.
The beautiful turquoise-blue earthenware pots, emblazoned with Rameses' name in hieroglyphs and with incantions to the gods Mut and Amon, are genuine.
But the belief that they held Rameses' preserved innards to help ease the pharoah into the afterlife is false, French investigators say.
Writing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, a team led by chemist Jacques Connan of the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg carried out molecular tests and carbon-dating on two samples of residue scraped from two jars.
Chromatography and mass spectrometry showed that one of the samples was an unguent, or scented oil, made from pine oil and animal fat [dating 128-228 years later]...The other sample, an orange-yellow compound, was found to comprise pure vegetable resin and was used for embalming [but dated some 900 years after Ramses died in 1213 BC]...
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The beautiful turquoise-blue earthenware pots, emblazoned with Rameses' name in hieroglyphs and with incantions to the gods Mut and Amon, are genuine.
But the belief that they held Rameses' preserved innards to help ease the pharoah into the afterlife is false, French investigators say.
Writing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, a team led by chemist Jacques Connan of the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg carried out molecular tests and carbon-dating on two samples of residue scraped from two jars.
Chromatography and mass spectrometry showed that one of the samples was an unguent, or scented oil, made from pine oil and animal fat [dating 128-228 years later]...The other sample, an orange-yellow compound, was found to comprise pure vegetable resin and was used for embalming [but dated some 900 years after Ramses died in 1213 BC]...