Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

The Mummy at the Georges Labit Museum in Toulouse

The list that Molly’s teacher distributed to the class might have also contained a reference to a certain mummy at the Georges Labit Museum in Toulouse, France. Carbon dating had been used to show that it was from about 1800 B.C. The tests had laid waste to the opinion of some Egyptologists that it was only from around 700 B.C. That is a whopping difference of more than a thousand years. Thirty-eight hundred years old was the verdict. That should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. Scientists had tested the mummy's linen wrappings to arrive at the earlier date.  In 2009, only months before Dawkins’ book was published, scientist tested some bone taken from the mummy's spine and concluded that the mummy was from about 700 B.C. after all. So, which is it? It is hard to say until someone can explain why the carbon dating of the linen cloth was so different than it was for the bone material. The floors of carbon dating laboratories are littered with such anomalies. In many cases these anomalies are eventually explained. Some have not been.