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NATURE|Vol 446|5 April 2007 NEWS
EVEREST EXPEDITION
The team riding an exercise bike on Everest tells all on the Nature newsblog.http://blogs.nature. com/news
CAUDWELL XTREME EVEREST
Joan of Arcs relics exposed as forgery
J. FOUCHET/SIPA/NEWSCOM
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.
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 Poincar 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. Id never have thought that it could be from a mummy.
Charlier and his colleagues didnt 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...