KEY POINTS:
Relics advertised as being remains of St. Joan of Arc are no such thing and may in fact be parts of an Egyptian mummy, Nature magazine reported today.
The magazine quoted French researchers who analyzed the relics and found they did not appear to be the burnt remains of anyone from the 15th century, but in fact dated to more than 2000 years ago.
A vanilla smell suggests natural decomposition, not burning, the magazine quotes a forensic scientist as saying.
Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431 in Rouen. The so-called relics were discovered in 1867 in a jar in the attic of a Paris pharmacy.
The Roman Catholic Church formally recognised them and they are kept in a museum in Chinon, France.
They include a blackened human rib, a cat's leg bone, some black chunks and a fragment of linen. Cats were often embalmed in ancient Egypt, but were also sometimes burned at the stake with accused witches in medieval Europe.
Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist at Raymond Poincare Hospital in Garches, was allowed to study the relics last year and said he was astonished by the results.
"I'd never have thought that it could be from a mummy," Nature quoted him as saying.
His team used several spectrometry devices to analyse the pieces. They also used a uniquely Gallic technique -- the noses of two famed perfumiers.
Both smelled hints of burnt plaster and vanilla.
Charlier said the plaster smell supported reports Joan of Arc was burnt on a plaster stake, instead of wood, to make the process last longer. But vanilla smells do not.
"Vanillin is produced during decomposition of a body," Charlier said. "You would find it in a mummy, but not in someone who was burnt."
"I see burnt remains all the time in my job," Charlier said. "It was obviously not burnt tissue."
Other evidence also pointed to an Egyptian mummy -- including the presence of pine pollen. Pine trees did not grow in Normandy at the time Joan of Arc was killed, but pine resin was used widely in Egypt during embalming, according to the report.
Carbon-14 analysis dated the remains to between 300 and 600 BC. 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 said.
- REUTERS
