Joan of Arc relics are actually Egyptian mummy remains!
The charred bones that were long believed to be remains of St. Joan of Arc don't belong to the French heroine but are instead the remains of an Egyptian mummy, a new study has shown.
Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist at the Raymond Poincaré Hospital in Paris, France, obtained permission last year to study the relics from the church in Normandy where they are housed.
The relics were said to have been retrieved from the French site where Joan was burned at the stake in 1431.
Charlier's team studied the relics —- including a fragment of cloth and a human rib -— under the microscope and subjected them to chemical tests...
Final proof came from carbon-14 analysis, which dated the human remains to between the third and sixth centuries B.C.
Chemical scans of all the relics further suggested Egypt as the place of origin, as the profiles closely matched those of Egyptian mummies rather than burned bones.
Read entire article at National Geographic News
Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist at the Raymond Poincaré Hospital in Paris, France, obtained permission last year to study the relics from the church in Normandy where they are housed.
The relics were said to have been retrieved from the French site where Joan was burned at the stake in 1431.
Charlier's team studied the relics —- including a fragment of cloth and a human rib -— under the microscope and subjected them to chemical tests...
Final proof came from carbon-14 analysis, which dated the human remains to between the third and sixth centuries B.C.
Chemical scans of all the relics further suggested Egypt as the place of origin, as the profiles closely matched those of Egyptian mummies rather than burned bones.