Paris - (Agence France Presse): The French establishment has been rocked to the core after the country's most sacred national treasure - bones of their patron Saint Joan of Arc - proved to be remains of a cat and a mummy raided from an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus linked to father of Egyptology Jean-François Champollion.
"Zees is like zee curse of Tutankhamun," sobbed the Archbishop of Tours whose diocese is in hock to the Banque de France for over fifty million euros raised as a mortgage on the relics.
Radio carbon dating has shown the ossified remains as those of a sixth century BC Egyptian mummy and a cat which Champoillion found when he was translating the Rosetta Bone.
Millions of devout pilgrims each year have steadfastly paid homage to the bones which are displayed in Tours Cathedral.
And the French President Jacques Chirac attributed his country's miracuous World Cup win in 1998 to an apparition of Saint Joan who came to him in a dream after he had prostrated himself all night before her alleged relics in an act of contrition imposed by Pope John Paul II.
"Alors, all zat flagelation before zee bones was worth it, even if it now seems it was just an old mummy's pussy I was praying to. Formidable!"
Mioaooowwwww!
