A rotting head stirs up debate in France.
The mummified skull attributed to French King Henri IV, distributed by the British Medical Journal in December 2010.
Image by HO / Reuters
In 2008, two Frenchmen tracked a mummified head believed to belong to King Henri IV to Jacques Bellanger, a local tax collector. Bellanger reportedly purchased the skull in the 1950s for 5,000 francs from a woman who bought it at a Paris auction house in the early 1900s.
What is believed to be the head of former French King Henry IV pictured in the 1930s.
Source: cache.daylife.com
A new book by Stéphane Gabet and Philippe Charlier, the team that tracked the skull to Bellanger, details the moment Bellanger uncovered the skull in a box in his attic:
Inside, there was something wrapped in an old towel. Jacques Bellanger folded back one side of the towel, then the other. The mummified head appeared, well conserved, impressive. It was a magic moment.
