Authentic acid blood mordanted the madder-dyed Shroud of Turin pinkish red before image formation - Jesus was dead
Creators: name: van der Hoeven, Adrie
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Biochemistry
subject: 30301 Chemical Characterisation of Materials
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences
subject: 39902 Forensic Chemistry
subject: FOS: Other medical sciences
subject: 30499 Medicinal and Biomolecular Chemistry not elsewhere classified
subject: 110202 Haematology
subject: FOS: Clinical medicine
subject: 69901 Forensic Biology
subject: Archaeology

description: ABSTRACT The chemical and physical properties of the Shroud of Turin, both of the non-image background, the image areas, the pinkish red bloodstains and the separate serum, especially their absorbance, fluorescence and FTIR spectra, are described and shown to be evidence for the presence of a pinkish red heme-madder complex, formed by the chemical interaction of authentic acid postmortem blood with yellow madder dye on the cloth before image formation. Besides the many normal blood characteristics, the lack of potassium of the red bloodstains indicates that the blood was hyperkalemic: that potassium had moved out of the red blood cells into the plasma, which inevitably occurs in acidemic blood. The absorbance spectra of the bloodstains indeed show the typical charge transfer band of acid blood at 630 nm. The lack of red blood cells, the lack of a large Soret band in the bloodstains’ absorbance spectra (at ca. 400 nm), and the peculiar pinkish-red color of the bloodstains indicate that, after a draining away of the potassium-rich plasma/serum, the red blood cells hemolysed (broke open) and their hemoglobin denatured further to acid heme dimers – which only have a small Soret band – and that these acid heme dimers mordanted the yellow madder dye on the Shroud pinkish red. The FTIR spectra of Shroud bloodglobs are similar to those of madder lake. Also the reddish color of the bloodstain fluorescence corresponds to the reddish fluorescence of madder lake, and the shape of the mean UV-vis reflectance spectrum of four bloodstains is compatible with a combination of madder dye, madder lake and heme. The presence of a thin coating of (acid) retrograded starch and acid madder dye on the superficial fibers of the Shroud is evidenced by the strippable coating in all Shroud areas, the erasal of superficial scorches and background color by hot firefighting water, leaving blue fluorescent areas, and the similar FTIR spectra of the main Shroud’s background and those of the madder-and-starch-containing radiocarbon-dating corner, compatible with those of linen, starch and madder dye. Also the visible pinkish hue, the acidichromism, reflectance spectra, fluorescence spectra, and yellow-green fluorescence of the background, the weaker image fluorescence, the blue-fluorescent ‘no-print’ areas, and the microscopic observations are evidence for the presence of madder dye on the Shroud. Madder dye is soluble in xylene and in toluene, the solvents that were used to wash the adhesive from Shroud fibers stuck to sticky tape samples of the main Shroud. This may explain why no positive wet-chemistry evidence of dye on fibers from the main Shroud was reported, but, much later, madder was easily found by wet chemistry on whole thread samples from the radiocarbon-dating corner, which already has been shown to be no repair. To this can be added that FTIR spectroscopy found pectin but no protein of gum Arabic on both the main Shroud and radiocarbon-dating corner. The starch-and-madder coating served as many agents in the Shroud’s history. It was probably originally applied as a fluoresceing fabric brightner for an authentic Jewish temple mantle, and it was a waterresistant filter separating the potassium-poor red blood cells and the potassium-rich serum of acid hyperkalemic postmortem blood, a saponin layer hemolysing the red blood cells, a denaturing and adsorbing substrate for pinkish heme-madder lake formation, an acid catalyst and easily oxidizable substrate for acid oxidation in image formation in only this ultra-thin and strippable fiber coating, an acid coating that allowed the formation of pure iron oxide particles on the outer edges of the large waterstains from cellulose-bound iron, and finally a potent preservative for serum and heme and cloth. A coating with Saponaria (soapweed) residues is shown to be incompatible with almost all properties of the Shroud and bloodstains. A realistic mechanism of formation of the separate serum coated fibers and different types of bloodstains – moist drying-clot imprints especially on the ventral half of the Shroud, blood rivulets across the dorsal half of the Shroud, and later imprints of fybrinolysed scourge wound clots on both halves of the Shroud – is described and complies with the events that led to the death and burial of Jesus, as recounted in the Gospels: scourging and crowning with thorns before midday, carrying the cross uphill, crucifixion and then death in the middle of the afternoon, a stabbing in the side, and then the deposition, wrapping in linen and transferral to the tomb – allowing the re-opening of crucifixion and head wounds, the formation by wet bloodstained hands of bloodsmears outside the body contours and a bloodsmear possibly on the edge of an oval first-century Jewish ornament (the petalon of a Sanhedrin member such as Joseph of Arimathea) that was laid on the chest of the body, and the running of irregular blood rivulets across the dorsal half of the waterresistant Shroud on a shoulder-carried water-absorbing wooden burial bier –, and finally the laying down of the body (plus bier) in the tomb at the end of the afternoon. The strenuous exercise and the crucifixion of several hours would have implied severe cramping, respiratory failure, dehydration and thus severe antemortem acidemia that inevitably increased after death and then apparently started a hyperfibrinolysis process (a remoistening of blood clots on the wounds, from within the body), as is evidenced by the pattern of unsmeared dumbbell-shaped imprints of scourge wound clots. Hyperfibrinolysis only starts up at an acid blood pH &lt; 6.8, which blood pH is incompatible with life but compatible with the absorbance spectra of the Shroud’s bloodstains. As the image fibers have lost their surface of easily oxidizable madder dye in the oxidative image formation process, evidenced by the image color and fluorescence, and as the bloodstains in image areas are all the same pinkish-red color and their reflectance spectra have the same shape, independent of the concentration of image fibers that would have been present in the bloodstain locations, the blood must have formed pinkish hememadder lake before the start of image formation. This, and the realistic appearance of the bloodstains and the presence of separate serum, as evidenced by FTIR spectra, precludes that the bloodstains were painted on a pre-existent, e.g. artificial, body image. Some well known red-blood hypotheses, such as those based on an ultra-high bilirubin level in the blood, UVirradiation of the blood, a Saponaria soap residue on the cloth, a nitric oxide ligand in a blood paint, and a red ochre paint are analysed and shown to be unable to explain all the Shroud’s bloodstain characteristics consistently. Experiments showed that blood can form pinkish stains on starched and madder-dyed linen. That there is a pinkish red bloodstain on the image of probably a first-century Jewish petalon, fits the high-priestly burial of Jesus Christ in the Shroud of Turin by Joseph of Arimathea. That the Shroud shows no signs of putrefaction of the dead body, which would have started about 40 hours after death, and that the dumbbell-shaped scourge marks on both halves of the Shroud are not smeared, means that the dead body and its imagebearing Shroud separated in an extremely delicate way that did not smear the moist fibrinolysed blood clots on the scourge wounds, which were still dry when the dead body was wrapped into the Shroud. This fits the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ.