For those of you interested, I include the abstract (was on a cd I got
at the meeting) of the poster by Danin and Baruch. You may find more
information at the web site of Danin that I shared on my last post.
-- James and Florence Mahaffy 712 722-0381 (Home) 227 S. Main St. 712 722-6279 (Office) Sioux Center, IA 51250XVI International Botanical Congess Abstract Number: 4188 Poster No. = 1014
FLORA OF THE SHROUD OF TURIN
Avinoam Danin1 and Uri Baruch 2. 1. The Hebrew University ofJerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel 91904, 2. Israel Antiquities Authority
The Shroud of Turin, the traditional burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth, has been kept in the city of Turin, Italy, since 1578. It is made of fine linen 4.35 m long by 1.1 m wide, bearing the full-length front and back images of crucified man and many other less-conspicuous images. Our re-examination of pollen grains collected in 1973 and 1978 from the Shroud and investigations of plant images observed on several sets of photographs and on the Shroud itself enabled us to discover a few indicator plants. These are Gundelia tournefortii, a spiny perennial composite, which grows only in part of the Middle East, Zygophyllum dumosum, an endemic shrub of Israel, Sinai and SW Jordan, Cistus creticus, a shrub of Mediterranean habitats. These plants and their distribution lead us to state that the Shroud of Turin existed already before the 8th century, that it orginated from the vicinity of Jerusalem, and that the assemblage of plants became part of the Shroud in the spring months of March-April. HTML-Version made 7 (saved by Mahaffy as text). July 1999 by Kurt St|ber